Fabienne Sylvia Josaphat

(Part I available here)

My mother’s eggs were always a bright yellow, cooked with semiripe hot peppers and served with a side of boiled plantain and fresh avocado. The air was heavy with the smell of food early in the morning, and although we were ready to fall asleep afterwards, Emmanuel wanted to play. I gladly indulged him. Racing our toy cars down the street was always an adventure, since we had to watch out for incoming vehicles. Every so often, a truck honked from a distance, overflowing with a load of passengers who clung to the railings and racks for dear life. Sometimes they were laden with enormous sacks of charcoal, plantain, mangoes, and sugarcane. And sometimes, they were brimming with clothes and shoes to be sold in another town. Driving those trucks was an amazing feat Emmanuel and I both wished to accomplish one day, swerving abruptly to avoid pot holes and bumps in the road, and braking suddenly at a stop.

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Katherine Atkinson

It seems I always waiting for him—to come back from tent or a session or some lime down the coast. I make the bed every morning, smooth out the sheets and fold the corners under the mattress ’cause he like it so. He like to pull back the covers, climb in and then stretch his feet against the tucked-in edges. He say it remind him of when he was a little boy.

I keep smoked herring, cleaned and boned—as much as you could bone herring—in a plastic bag in the freezer so I could make a herring and breadfruit quick if he feel for it. Boy, that man could buss up a breadfruit and herring. And I leave the porch light on because I always imagine night woulda fall already when he come back, the crickets making how much noise and Miss Anthea’s dog next door quarrelling that every other dog on the block liming. “Ella,” he used to joke, “the reason Miss Anthea alone is she always want keep her man tie up like that dog. That poor animal paying for every man that ever left her.” (more…)

Killing Time

I

shwing shwang
shwang shwing
I file the machete

every stroke up and down
the fat little sword,
my face screwer
my heart harder
and I start sweat

shwing shwang
shwang shwing

every stroke I feel more like man
I goin deal with you and
I savourin it
I goin kill you
an’ the whole world
wit’ one bitch blow

shwing shwang
shwang shwing

funny how serious and mean I could look
when is time to off a harmless thing

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I Chant

I and I chant Rastafari
speaking truth to power
while Babylon keeps burning

with holy fire.
I and I chant Rastafari
pleading Ithiopia to stretch

forth her black hands and gather
her sons and daughters from the
four corners of the world.

Bring them back to Africa, the land
of black gods and ancestors who
never really die but remain steadfast

like the pulse that beats in I and I heart.
I and I chant Rastafari so that the sleeping
bones of I brothers and sisters can wake

and walk again. I chant down prisons,
banks, schools, churches, and other organizations
that seek to capitalize and colonize I people.

I chant down facebook, gmail, twitter,
different names—same game of conquer and
claim—for the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.

What a shame!
Bringing total destruction in their wake;
telling I people they cannot communicate,

live, without being bound to the invisible
chains of the Internet. I and I chant until
I can’t chant anymore—which will never

happen because I and I chant endures.

Elvis Alves was born in Guyana, South America, and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He is a graduate of Colgate University and Princeton Theological Seminary. Elvis lives and works in Brooklyn NY.

jamaica farewell

(for Jan)

she lives in a hut
high above the bronx
happy in her three square
and her co-op shares of
permanence

in winter the
snows puff up on the
window sill
the water in the bay outside
freezes over
amtrak is a dumb drone
metallic boxes
frigid

coming in from christmas shopping
she codes her way
into highrise warmth
stomps the snow off her boots
and examines the gifts for home
this girl from ting country

you’ve come a long way baby
texas tlatelolco
kingstontown

outside amtrak is the
only living thing that
moves as she remembers
her visit last summer
and the snapshots taken
at dunn’s river falls
trying to rub some heat back into
her heart.

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