Current Issue

Carnival Sunday. July 19, 2020

Sometimes, I wake into perfect days.
Hills green my window, see me south
to cloud-high Sociere.

West is the blue bay: Choc,
pivoting round Walcott’s Island
in the lee of a land so fair

J’ai écouté l’appel de la mer
avant l’empreinte de tes mots
sur ma langue

Avant l’impact de tes yeux sur ma joue
j’ai humé la beauté de l’ile
et les  couleurs de la terre ont
posé des éclats d’orage sur mon front

I had listened to the call of the sea
before the print of your words
on my tongue

Before the impact of your eyes on my cheek
I had breathed the island beauty
and the colors of the land
had put thunder slivers on my brow

I reach for the volume she
loaned me, bending corners
each time I pause.

There’s love in it, and action.
Bars where humans drink,
and where freedom’s taken

away. There’s comfort when
the world intrudes, and a
new chapter lets the hero

Tonight I feel the need 
to build poems,
shape myself into words
to move mountains, words fit
to cradle
the sleeping poinsettia.
Spoken in whispers
shouted among trees
I would build 
to shake and quake
the mighty Soufriere,

The sky the blue hue of spilled ink
Heavy like a blanket
Warm comfort against the mild October chill
And instead of silence
Song
The crickets
Some keeping rhythm, some carrying the melody
Every gap filled with sound
And in the distance
Dancehall

I will love you for life
I will love you until my hair is grey and stringy
And my teeth wobble in my gums
I will love you until my knees crumble to dust under my own weight
And I clasp my pallid hands over a still heart
That still beats
For you

But looka this thing for me, though. This child
born and named for daybreak. This lithe wire
testing her spark but wanting, still, at 17
to nuzzle her mother’s neck, be up onderneat’
an armpit. This creature, beyond gazelle,
fixing to fold her overflowing self

When Jenny saw Joe’s big nose
and vein ridged hands, she knew the house
and farmlands he owned were worth sacrificing
any harboured thoughts of love
that survived the 18 years of tribulation
life had dished her.
Her idea of love began to fade

The odometer has finally reached zero mph;
the love of his life is out in the shed,
Da’s thinking of days & nights spent gallivanting
with a tank full of gas and torque in his lead.

i.
my grandmother’s second husband loved her.
he wasn’t the serial marrying kind like my grandfather
he stayed as long as he could
until the rum she had transported in her veins from the island
liquefied between them,
the dreary drip of cold grey English skies

was not just the mangoes
or the orchid or palms.
It was also what you left for later—
a clean shirt and a man’s deodorant
standing erect in the bathroom
claiming domain.
It isn’t just TV repair
or morning coffee.
It is parted curtains.

it was something in the way
the gate moved on its rust reddened hinges
that though aged, still
offered a smooth, noiseless action,
that brought her smile.

after João Gilberto

thirteen miles of dancing was all I had left.
Our bodies clung through chords, swaying
sonorities of the barefoot country left behind,

winds on the waterfront blew acoustic style.
I tasted your distillery breath

The perpetual homage to jet-lagged leaves
and bougainvillea’s long temptations eventually die.
In youth, you mistake
long kisses of July rain
for something permanent.

He said to me, “You’re a poet. 
Make these days brighter. 
Turn the world into glass. Give us 
your seer’s eyes to see the red 
bougainvillea flower again, the green
of palm trees under grey, volcanic ash
that for all its birthing from fury and fire, 

Yesterday he saw a
Hummingbird sitting in air
Sipping from its ixora sunshine slush
of sweetness –

Listening to “East of the River Nile”
Augustus harmonica bathed in
Rock stone sun light on the CD cover

A prodigal depressed
his tunic stained
and torn by looming botheration
a loose string hangs from curled hairs
of his sweaty bulging stomach

Winded in a meander
he always stares
at the clouds for thirst

    Our Rebecca was the perfect daughter:
    A’s in almost all her subjects at school,
    a wonderful help around the house—
both with domestic chores and looking after
her two younger siblings. As a parent
I had no complaint; her mother worried

    Sent to the corner shop
    to buy empanadas and pan dulce,
Isabella, wandering home through wild city streets,
is suddenly arrested by a wall of graffiti:
the colourful glyphs reach out and trap her
and in that tangle of symbols she is wound