Destined to corrode,
A new layer of rust forming
Every time he is forced to come out and say hello.
Sourness A Poem by K. Jared Hosein
The world crawls forward
And spouts pimples shaped like nuclear power plants
And keloids shaped like oil spills.
But there are some things that remain stuck in time,
Retaining the permanence of scar tissue.
Old metal water towers with flaking red paint
Still sitting lofty and empty
Overlooking the asphalt roads that cut through villages
Where everyone knows each other
Even though they have to walk ten minutes
To get to each other’s house.
This is where time is measured by geology
And the night shift by the flambeau,
Seasons are named after fruit and vegetable
And the only true sourness they know of
Is the senescence of the papaya and the mango.
The End.....Art by Portia Subran
Dream Reader Art by Portia Subran
let bygones be bygones A Poem by Loretta Oleck
x marks the spot where the hatchet is buried-
once and for all
under the thatched roof hut
stash it flash it mash it up baby
as palms nod teasingly towards the sea
scrappy dogs roam free scampering ahead
or lagging behind as we stagger along-
their watchfulness a keen reminder
that there’s a bleating heart of darkness
on this island
the sea is blue but gritty too washing up
seaweed and salt and coughed up blood
from a past where blood was bought or taken
or buried in the mangrove swamps
scrubby hills sugarcane
all those places where fire burns debris
surrounded by a gaping witness-
the mouth of sky asking
why do some have so little
while others have so much?
sullen sons silently wield machetes
in a slow skulk down a dusty road
long-legged daughters are silent too-
spiders sitting idle out front weathered shacks
painting glitter over bubblegum polish
rainbow curlers bobbing round their heads
occasionally stirring odd chicken parts
that simmer and brown on the stove all day
someone stuck a drying starfish
in the mossy palm-tree’s trunk
someone raked dried leaves from the sand
early morning shadows flickered cross-hatched
on the walls of the thatched roof hut
where the hatchet is buried
let bygones be bygones
stash it flash it mash it up baby
wild island dogs curl in sleep-
now and then opening a weary eye
just to make sure all is still safe
secret shack A Poem by Loretta Oleck
hidden behind a thicket of boughs
alive with snarled vines
was a pink shack with a lopsided door-
a leaning sentry guarding rotted wood floors
and ripped curtains of tangled lace
and a broken clock’s face where the hands
had stopped at half past four
snapping open a blade
I crudely carved my name above the door
then distracted by a mezuzah tilted on the frame
the blade slipped on the tail of the letter y
slashing through history and time
splicing through the door screen
slicing through my lifeline-
a bloodied omen
a ticking time bomb
scarring my palm
I had thought claiming doors
would be easy and would make me brave
I had no idea my lifeline could be altered with a blade
I had thought I was the only Jew on this island-
apparently others had found this door too
Saffron Life A Poem by Loretta Oleck
I lived a saffron life
a midnight howl
walking winding alleyways
of bustling markets
following trails past pails of scuttling
cobalt crabs and buckets of jasmine rice
into the heart of the safflower scent
I lived a saffron life plaiting my past
from spiceberry silk
a velvet widow spider
in a vacant window frame
weaving gossamer curtains
to be pulled up or down depending
upon my darkest or lightest mood
or the squall of the Caribbean wind
or the direction of the rooftop
weather vane
I followed shadows of patterned cloth
swaying like dancers holding tight
to wooden clothespins
straddling the frayed line
down a crooked path towards
arms outstretched
into the sun silk center
of the labyrinth
Diana A Poem by Clinton Van Inman
Drag your white skull before blind seas
That tumble dazed to your mono-eyed magic.
Go tell Neptune when the night is through.
Charm him, too, with your waxing and waning.
But you can’t catch me with those veiled half smiles.
Your borrowed brilliance exposes you
As I know your darker side.
Go charm some other star struck rhapsodist.
Sylvia A Poem by Clinton Van Inman
I hear they have placed
A pretty blue plaque
High above your flat
So that tourists can find you
And say that this is the spot
Where you killed yourself.
Lucky girl, you modern Sappho
To take the quantum leap
Like a comet to take your place
Among the darkest regions of empty space
With a brilliance that few can keep
And even less the mind to know
Where no dull planet can perturb you
As fallen flowers have no faces.
Immeasurable A Poem by Robert R. Gibson
My love is immeasurable
Like if I tried to count exactly how many grains of sand
Were on Accra Beach at 1 in the morning on Tuesday night
Or what exactly is the weight of a heart made heavy with missing you
Immeasurable like the exact distance apart lust is from like is from love on the emotional scale
Or the speed of which my heart escalates when my thoughts oscillate around you
Or the strength of concentration it takes to control the penetration of
Your mind with my words
I want to make love with my voice
Not make you feel like a used whore
Emotionally raped by a wham bam thank you ma'am conversation.
My love is immeasurable
Like the exact span of the universe I fall into when we kiss
Or exactly how many seconds I have to miss the beating of my heart
Before I have to break the link with your lips
to make sure I can continue living.
My love is immeasurable
Like the exact amount of pleasure derived from hearing your voice
After not hearing it since yesterday at 9 o'clock
Since you were too tired to stay on the phone and took an early night
Or the speed in kilometres per second of my thoughts
As they race each other across the distance between my soul to yours
Irrespective of whether you are across the world
Or laying
right next to me, wrapped up in my arms.
No instruments in existence can measure the level of persistence it takes to wear down your defenses
The length of time I dug into the trenches and made war against your shyness
Took siege against your reluctance to peek out of your shell
I rejoiced like Israel when that Jericho wall fell
And I moved in to lay claim to my territory.
My love for you is immeasurable.
So just accept it -
And stop trying.
Parts one and two A Poem by Dawnell Harrison
Love is my destiny, part one.
Poetry is my honey nectar,
Part two –
Its sweetness slowly
Sliding down my chin.
I shall not live
In fear of hairy,
Cowardly monsters
That move quietly
In the dark still
Of the night planting
Injustice
In my fertile garden.
200 leis A Story by Jenille Prince
For my grandmothers: Katherine and Ruby
Aunty Lenore warned me this morning: “We have 200 leis, and it have 186 people coming! And you see who want to be greedy and ask for two, or say they want one to take home for somebody else? Don’t give them, you hear? And if anybody who not on the guest list come off the road and try to get one, don’t give it to them! Because they not invited! Not to my party!”
I know I look good today. Everybody keep telling me I look like Diana Ross, but I find I look even better than her! This is a special occasion! My only child just get married today, and I giving her a Hawaiian reception with a luau, leis, and everything! I get the inspiration from this travel magazine from America I see the other day, dated January 1983. The cover story was about this white actress, in her Hawaiian home! She had big blonde hair and pink press-on nails, and in the article she was saying how much she like Hawaii. Oh, and there was a picture of her at something they call a luau (they pronounce it loo-owww) with all these Hawaiians, who look kind of Chinese and Indian and Carib mix-up. And all the Hawaiians had these flowers around their necks. So when Denisha tell me she getting married, I say we going to have leis too! My new boyfriend call this fancy flower shop in Port-of-Spain, and they say they could make leis for us out of a special type of pink and white frangipani that does only grow in Hawaii. So I say alright, yes! I always like Hawaii. Gidget goes Hawaiian, Hawaii Five-O, and now Magnum P.I. Denisha deserve all this. Only the best for my child. Especially since she father Delroy not here!
I am standing outside of St. Timothy Hall in Mt. Lambert, handing out leis at my cousin Denisha’s wedding. She is my first cousin on my mother’s side. The red, black, and white Trinidadian flag flaps a few feet away from me, near the front wall. It is October, so it is rainy season, and there is a heavy smell of leftover rain in the air. Water is shining on the leaves of the big palm tree near the flag. From where I stand, I can see the Northern Mountain Range, wide and green, keeping watch over Northern Trinidad. I have one lei around my head and another around my neck. I don’t mind the coconut shell bra and grass skirt my aunt made me wear. It is nothing more revealing than what I wore at Carnival this year, “wining” down to calypso by Arrow and Merchant. Geez, Aunty Lenore went on and on about these damn leis! I told her to get some school children to string some flowers together if she wanted leis, but she said she wanted it done professionally. Anyway, she can afford it, because her new man has money. He is this big-shot who came back to Trinidad from the States about five years ago, during the oil boom. I guess he’s giving her more than Uncle Delroy ever did.
I know it sound bad, but I was glad when I hear that Delroy was trapped in Grenada. Because I wanted an excuse for not inviting him to the wedding. But aye, is just like Delroy to get trap in Grenada during the coup, eh? His family come to Trinidad when he was a little boy, forty something years ago. All that time, he never gone back to Grenada. And now the minute he decide to go back, confusion break out there! Everybody on curfew, nobody know what going to happen, and I hear they killing people. You feel that is coincidence? I sure is Delroy who cause that coup! And he ain’t even here at the wedding, but people still talking about him. People coming up to me after the ceremony, wondering where Delroy is. Like they more concerned with Delroy than with the bride! Anyway, I watching Panorama every night, just to see if they have some kind of footage from Grenada of him making confusion, or leading up some junta rebel militia thing. I waiting for them to show him, with stripes paint up on his face, and one of them big Russian AK seven-forty-seven guns in his hands.
My aunt almost opted for a true Hawaiian luau experience, by having the wedding on a beach in Tobago. But then she decided on the hall instead. “The hall nice and private!” she said. “No ruffians could come off the road and start interfering in things!” I remember the first time I ever heard the word “ruffian”. When Denisha and I were getting older and starting to develop, Uncle Delroy had warned us about ruffians.
The boy Denisha marrying sweet too bad! You know he mother have Chinese in her, and the father is half Portuguese. So I hope they children will have soft hair! See, now that is something that I can’t even say around Delroy. That I hope the children have soft hair. If I say that to him, he would be ready to give me some big long lecture, and tell me I don’t like how black people look, and how I only like black people when they don’t look too black! But that kind of talk is something he pick up when he was living away, you know. All them black power thing he pick up in England and the States. And in spite of all that, he give he last child a Russian name! No black power name like Jamal, or Kwame, or Makandal! Instead, he call him Yuri!
I liked Uncle Delroy, and I still miss him. He used to come and visit us sometimes when we were little, usually on the weekends. I remember one time when Denisha and I were kids, we were outside with him picking mangoes. We picked two mangoes from the lowest branch, because it was all we could reach. But Uncle Delroy told us not to eat those mangoes, because they were not the best ones. He walked around the tree, studying it. Then he pulled at one of the higher branches, until it came down to his eye level. He plucked two dark yellow mangoes with red and black smudges. Then he wiped and peeled them with a little knife he carried about, and gave them to us.
Delroy would have real problems with this wedding. I could hear him now, lecturing me, in that stupid high-pitch voice he does use when he pretending to be joking but he really serious. He would probably say “What wrong with a normal Trinidad wedding? Whoever hear of people wasting flowers to put around people neck, at a Trinidad wedding?” Oh, and he would laugh that stupid laugh, and he would ask me something ridiculous, like if I think this is some type of cruise ship. You see, that is why we couldn’t live together. Delroy did not like nice things like I did. He did not want to better himself, like I did. All the years he spend in England and then the States, and he ain’t even come back with a bit of refinement. You think he try to do something big when he come back to Trinidad, like be a school principal or politician? No! All he do was sit outside in the evenings, drinking puncheon rum, and laughing loud-loud with low-class people.
It would have been nice if Uncle Delroy were here, to make a father-of-the-bride speech. I liked his voice. One time when I was eight, our family went to Mayaro Beach for the day. Uncle Delroy asked Denisha and me what we were learning in school. We told him we had learnt a poem, and a happy expression came over his face when we told him what it was. “I must go down to the sea!” he exclaimed. “I remember that!” And then he recited the whole poem by heart. He had not heard it since he was a little boy, but he still remembered all the words. He made the poem sound so real, almost as if he had wrote it himself. Uncle Delroy was not a big man, but he had a rough, deep voice — even deeper than some other men’s. It was not fine-sounding, like those people on the radio and TV. But it was clear and strong. And it always had a bit of a l
augh to it.
When I first met Delroy, he had just come back from England. It was the same year that Trinidad get independence. He had been studying law in London. Anyway, to make a long story short, Denisha was born the next year. But he and I used to fall out, so he did move out and was living in Siparia. We used to see him sometimes. He would come and spend the weekend, and make sure Denisha was doing well in school. But when she was ten, he went to the States. He say he was going there to make money to send back for us. But then he come back to Trinidad a few years later, and take up with a woman in Rio Claro, and have this Yuri. I didn’t even know when he come back to Trinidad. He was hiding from me, because he didn’t want me to know he was back. He even used to go and visit Denisha in school, instead of coming to the house. But I bounce him up one day and he had to acknowledge me! I call out “Aye, Delroy!” so everybody could hear, and he was forced to turn around and talk to me. I tell him “I hear you have a son, and his name is Yuri. What kind of name is that?” and he say “Yuri is a unique name, and nobody else here have it. Trinidad don’t need any more Errols, Dexters, or Lesters!”
Denisha has been bright since we were little. She usually placed in the top three after each term test, when we were in primary school. But one term, she came sixth. She bawled when she gave Uncle Delroy her report book to sign. But he was not mad. Instead, he hugged her, and told her that he knew that she would come first next time. Then she told him that she did not like school and did not want to go anymore. Uncle Delroy shook his head. He was not vexed, but he was firm. “Don’t ever say that you don’t like school,” he told her. “When my mother was little, she had to leave school when she was ten, because she had to help her mother with the other children. She cried when she found out she could not go back to school!” He said that Denisha and I were lucky, because we could go to school for as long as we wanted.
Denisha have a good job as an elementary school teacher. Last year she went to Margarita Island for shopping with her friends. She can buy nice things for herself. She have three pairs of them fancy strappy shoes with heels, tight jeans like the ones Brooke Shields does wear, jerseys that say “Flashdance”, roller skates, nice makeup, records, and two pieces of real jewellery. And her man buy her a nice little car, and she tell me she will take me anywhere I want and I don’t have to fight up with taxis. We have all of that, and we didn’t need Delroy to give it to us.