Current Issue
give me a reason
so that my body is no longer sovereign
no longer this inviolable place
why changes in the frequency of my breath
rhythm control
heartbeats
eyelids
The jour ouvert, the mardi gras, the numbing dance that does not end
this careless costume, its sinews drenched in dew
in glitter of sweat, in tatters of flesh will fall away and
like your forebears you’ll philosophise «enbas la terre pas ni plaisir», you
Do it in this clear-eyed light
now that you know that your back’s against
imponderable walls,
do it in the day-breaking light of
these times because you can no longer
retreat under rocks,
do it where the water washes
“Nunca hubiera creído que la muerte se llevara a tantos”
- S. Eliot
Cuando despertó la pandemia todavía seguía ahí
y recordó el cuento de Monterroso
con algo de ironía con algo de pavor
Translation by Keith Ellis
“I had not thought death had undone so many.”
- S. Eliot
When he woke up, the pandemic was still there,
and he remembered Monterroso’s short story
I write the following brief lines having been witness to a process by which literary theory achieves growth, evolution and function.
_ for the late Owen Seymour Arthur,
Prime Minister of Barbados Sept. 6, 1994 to Jan. 15, 2008
(Cousin of the late PM)
that I will look upon you, lying next to me
for a while untroubled, and I will wish
that you should not wake, afraid that when
you stir, when your eyes of almond-brown honey
open to the world, to me next to you
and to all this might mean,
NEGUS 2
-for Kamau Brathwaite
It is
It is
how you slash and burn an entire lexicon
to rule among the harbingers of language;
Review by Jennifer Rahim
Question (Q): Lisa, your YA novel Home Home (Papillote Press, 2018) tells the story of fourteen-year-old Trinidadian Kayla, who struggles with depression and anxiety, as well as with her mother’s personal and cultural inability to understand that these con
My Dad used to leave us for long hours when we went to the beach, any beach, we could be in the States or another Caribbean island. It was as if he was forever seeking a way Back Home, the sands of Barbados on other shores.
Felice sat hunched over her embroidery hoop, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She looked up occasionally over the rim to check a paper pattern that was spread on the table in front of her.
When Myrna laughed, the sound rumbled from deep inside her belly. People would pause at this other-worldly eruption.
My voice played musical chairs before leaving. It bounced apologies around the jogger who found me, the policeman, the nurse at the hospital – trying to find itself seated and steady when the music stopped. What it said was ‘sorry’.
A man’s hand came through the wall behind our bed, made a web of cracks around it and shuddered a minute before it was still, bruises starting to set on the fingers. It was a left hand, with slightly curved fingers hanging loose and limp.