Portraits

. . . and if you’re lucky you’ll have time
to give her treasures you’d really like to keep,
candid shots you didn’t have time to stick,
stuffed in the crevice of an old album:
grandmother louped—at whose wedding?
pixelated father—flying roof-high, dancing the cocoa,
dingy-white sail-shirt, sole umbra in candescent sky;
except . . . what if you’re not lucky?

and she arrives to find you toying with your rat-pack,
walks over for the spot Alzheimer’s check:
Stop watching bony touch, braille-ing faces . . .
“Who’s that?” she says—
you swallow, still, to suppress the croak,
lest whisper uncontrolled, segue into
“Mum, you must be tired, you need to close up.”
Old fish head, grey rim around your iris widening,

you who once sucked fish eye lenses, biting down
white archived print, flattening celluloid images—
you need her help to extend this raw slide
view of still live images, “Sable Venus,” “Flagellation
of a female Samboe slave,” loin-clothed, gift-wrapped
at wrist, flayed flailing—Jesus! crucifix-ed,
beautified, beatified, mummy-fied in plaster of Paris
exhibits all, all these too captured silent. Read the rest of this entry »

Anything can inspire me

Anything can inspire me to verse:
a dog sleeping soundly
on a makeshift veranda
thick croton flowers lining a sloping path
leading to an outside wash area
lanky trees spiralling to the heavens
like the hope of a family
praying, Love is enough
is stronger than death
richer than wealth

But what gives the greatest inspiration
is the smell of seasoned meat
sizzling in a pot
drifting across the valley
lifting sweet scents to the open air Read the rest of this entry »

What the spirit knows

What if I told you
I’d never made love before
never been this accountable
for writhing, sinuous
and tremulous like a calf
rising on its legs for the first time.
What if I told you
I’d never been seen like that before—
laid out like sliced almonds.
Would you feel sorry for me
if I told you, this movement
was like spiritual déjà vu
but I know I never made love before.
Never free fell into a dark descent
without bracing or flailing.
Never knew what it was
to have God whisper in my ear
never knew what it was
to leave our bodies behind.

Soyini Ayanna Forde was raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She enjoys hot cups of tea, pop culture, select branches of feminist theory, and various facets of West Indianness. She has work in Racialicious, the Guidebook, tongues of the ocean, Black Renaissance Noire, and the Caribbean Writer. She is a graduate of Barry University and the Stonecoast MFA program. 

Diana McCaulay

an excerpt from the upcoming novel Huracan)

Zachary heard the call of the lookout from a distance—“Land!” He opened his eyes. The deck rocked gently. He wondered how the lookout could see anything—it was still dark. Perhaps it was only dark in the small space he occupied—the one place on Prospero he had found that was mostly private. It was a cramped space under the fo’c’sle he had found by accident, running one day to escape the icy rain from a sudden squall, not days out of Leith. He had not yet gained his sea legs, and as the ship leaned into the wind, he had stumbled on the last step and fallen full length on the heaving deck. Just then the deck canted sharply and he felt himself sliding towards the weather rail. He saw himself simply slipping over the side into the black sea, not even able to utter a yelp of surprise. No one would miss him for days—perhaps not until they first made landfall in Jamaica. A cry would go up—Has anyone seen young Macaulay? There would be a search of the ship, from the bare, shrieking heights of the rigging to the rat-infested, stinking depths of the hold, where the cracking sounds of a wooden ship tearing through the sea banished thought. They would find no trace of him; Zachary Macaulay, sixteen, lost at sea. Aye, and he’ll be sorry, Zachary thought, picturing his father’s twisted face the last time he had seen him.

            Then the ship steadied and the boy’s slide was slowed and he grabbed a half-hidden cleat behind a coil of rope. He pulled himself, gasping, into the small, sheltered space, where it was warmer if not dry, and he wedged himself there to wait out his first winter storm. Gradually, his nausea left him and although his muscles ached the next day, and his limbs were bruised, he vowed not to return to his airless cabin for the rest of the voyage to the West Indies. Read the rest of this entry »

Underwater

Sky seems round every time she cries
Trees knit fingers and thumbs over the road
Providing complete cover from sky fruit
Straight road longer than sight

Girl in her keeps looking over shoulder
Woman tells her this only wastes time
Look how flat sky curves when you cry
Glance back for another on the road

Her bare feet pick up splinters she ignores
For now but must fish out with a needle later
This sky cradles the night and gestates the day
This road measures her years end to end

A woman ruled by a fifteen-year-old girl
A road wrapped by trees following sky Read the rest of this entry »

Time’s Children

I hear the children’s laughter in the sea’s
waves while they throw their hands like stars
up to the sky. They splash the ripples where
a slave-ship once seared a seething scar
into the ocean’s back. Children stamp
the sands as breezes whistle folk-songs
of long ago when a stranded slave had felt
the pull of home as slavers tugged his neck
toward a new world of pain. A gull’s cry
echoed the ache inside his heart.
Soon he is rooted to a strange earth,
digging seeds of hope to his groans’ rhythms
which grew to bloom in youth’s green harvest,
free to play in the island’s sky of sunlight.
His children scoop open the sands of time where
their father buried the cold fire of freedom.

Kemar Cummings lives in Jamaica, where he is pursuing a Literatures in English degree at the University of the West Indies. He was first published in his high school magazine, where he won a prize in a literary competition. He has also been published in the Gleaner (Jamaica) and in the Jamaica Observer’s weekly magazine, Bookends.

Easter Sunday: Remembrance

The congregation is young and old; few in between.
A young man shakes my hand. His palm is hard—
a worker’s palm—and hopeful for a wife.

We honour woman-courage on this day:
an empty tomb before Black Mary’s gaze.

The women who aren’t girls all let themselves wear fat
that cloaks hard muscle, big hearts, brass voices.
Their eyes are soft. Their green-eyed children
inhabit skins the shades of sand, of soil,
of treebark, eggshell, cedar, earth, red loam.

The braveheart women weep, and laugh.
The rain falls with the Gospel.
Christ is gone, the angel sings,
and the silver rain falls down.

Nicolette Bethel is a Bahamian playwright, poet, and anthropologist, who is an assistant professor of sociology at the College of The Bahamas. Her work has been published in a variety of print and online publications, including Caribbean Writer and Caribbean Review of Books. She is the founder of Shakespeare in Paradise, an international theater festival held in Nassau, Bahamas, every October, and the founding editor of the online Caribbean literary journal tongues of the ocean. In 2010, her poetry chapbook Mama Lily and the Dead was published by Poinciana Paper Press.

untitled

if i was a better poet
i would convince the world, my love.
but because i am not,
i only have the ocean and you,
and the ocean replies
only in gulls.

i am not a politician, my love.
i’m a thinking, feeling man.
a man who loves the ocean,
and you.

if i was a better poet
i could kill all politicians
with one strong wind of truth.
but because i am not,
i argue with sheep.

thank you for trusting only the moon
and the waves, for your campaign of seaweed,
swaying only when moved by strong winds,
thank you for needing no convincing,
nor a poet to love you,
thank you for being content
with a stammering man.

if i was a better poet
i would convince the world, my love.
but because i am not,
i whisper into the ear of the ocean,
and it will reply to you

gales of gulls. Read the rest of this entry »

Papine

Zoop, zop, zoop
Zoop, zoop, zoop
Zoop, zoop, zoop
La la la la la
La la la la la

Celebrating a Jamaican spring morning
Kool FM dishing sweet soul melodies
Antioxidants eliminating
Free radicals from the stream

Constant Spring rises in the distance
Like flute notes
Star burst sunrays sweep my gaze

Her green roof stretched
Can’t cover the fire rust
Zinc fences of her neighbors

Gully banks stripped of their identity
Nothing grows now
Now even the living dead
Who refuse to move to higher ground

A mini bus of noises invades my solitude
Bad man tunes rapid firing
Beautiful people packed like sardines
Can’t breathe

They see ugly, feel ugly
Hear ugly, hoping
The next stop is Papine
Living dead stay silent while
The noise a buss up them head

Tired of hearing the same old
Wash up Cartel and gully bank stuff
They wrap, sell, feed, inject
Into conscious, subconscious cognitive centers

Want to hear rain tongue
Licking zinc roof belly clean
Finding grooves tracing
Igniting lightening thunder streams
Of warmth that only rain God
Tongue fingers can feel

Want to see a dragon fly
Kissing a rainbow angel
High up over a blooming poinsettia
As psychedelic as a Marley spliff pull
On a mystic morning

Turn down the noise
Increase the positive vibes
On this Tropical soft lit morning
Want to hear waves lashing
Bashing, crashing, caressing screaming
Melodies of love and happiness

I turn up my stereo
And down struck the distraction Read the rest of this entry »

Below, in alphabetical order, are the poets and short fiction writers shortlisted for the 2011 Small Axe Literary Competition. The winners are marked with asterisks.

Poetry

Philip Armbrister

Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné

Malika Booker

Sonia Farmer**

Shauna Morgan Kirlew

Janice Lynn

Danielle McShine**

Short Fiction

Katherine Atkinson

Elise Dash

C. Dominique Gibson

Heidi Holder**

Karen Nicole Hutchinson

Barbara Jenkins**

Vijay Maharaj

Sharon Millar