Current Issue
c’est toujours comme ça à chaque fois
le jour et la nuit viennent se confiner ensemble
dans ma mémoire en ébullition
lorsque ma claustration se transforme
en une saison engloutissante
un autre grand voyage
dans un voyage ordinaire
it’s always like this every time
day and night are confined together
in my boiling memory
when my confinement turns
into an engulfing season
another great voyage
in an ordinary voyage
where the words that fight
collide violently
donne-moi une raison
pour que mon corps ne soit plus souverain
plus ce lieu inviolable
pourquoi des changements de fréquence de mon souffle
contrôle du rythme
battements de cœur
de paupières
on a souillé mon corps
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
one has tarnished my body
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
In the land of wood, water and levity,
we roamed, as young men do, but separately.
I joined him after Michael’s defeat in 1980.
(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 conditions are bio
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. A stretch of aida cloth with colourful images hung from one side of the hoop.