Poetry

Maroula Blades

Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné**

Shivanee Ramlochan

Lynn Sweeting**

Short Fiction

Alexia Arthurs**

Summer Edward

Glynis Guevara

Joanne Hillhouse

A. Naomi  Jackson

Sharon Millar**

Dwight Thompson

You Will Listen to Me—1

New York: A man who built a voodoo shrine
using his ex-girlfriends’s underwear—
then killed her mother, and a dog—

was sentenced Thursday to 28 years to life
in prison. The ex-girlfriend, Françoise McDaley,
16, told police that Pierre Carrenard, 36,

harassed her after she broke up with him.
On the day of the crimes, it is reported
Carrenard called her at work and threatened

her mother, Esperance Labidou, a Haitian
immigrant who worked at a bus company.
Carrenard later stabbed the mother 25 times

in her home, before he turned the knife on her
Chichuahua, Foo Foo. He then fled to Florida.
Police found a shrine in his apartment, made

of McDaley’s underwear and one of his socks
tied together in a vine. Carrenard explained
in court that the shrine “was a sort of spell

to control her spirit.” Police also found
a letter in his apartment. “All I want to do
is to love you and make a life with you,

but your family keeps getting in the way.
Let this be the last interference. You will
no longer listen to your family. You will
listen to me.”

You Will Listen to Me—2

What you have just read is a condensed
transcript of the real news story, “Man
with voodoo shrine gets life in prison.”*

No byline accompanies this titillating tale
of murderous love; the wild pair of sock
and underwear, vine of love; the breed-ID’d dog,

whose name is “Crazy Crazy,” if said
in Creole. What is crazy? The man stabbing
the mother; the man knifing the dog;

the story itself a dog, rummaging through trash
for a bone. And what of the girl? Only 16
to the man’s 36 years. Here the story

doesn’t blink. Should we write a new headline,
leave voodoo alone, and continue to climb
up this story’s vine?

“Man with mental illness menaces family”?
Do not leave me, dear reader, as I dredge up
the dreary details, the awful facts. Ne me quitte pas.

* “Man with voodoo shrine gets life in prison,” Associated Press, 18 August 2006

Danielle Legros Georges is an associate professor in the Creative Arts in Learning Division of Lesley University. She is the author of a book of poems, Maroon (2001), which explores Haitian-American identity. Her poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in Agni, the American Poetry Review, Black Renaissance Noire, Callaloo, the Caribbean Writer, Consequence, Encarta Africana, the Boston Haitian Reporter and the Women’s Review of Books, among other publications; on The Bill Moyers Journal (PBS program); and in numerous anthologies.

1.

I would check for Rob during that year of jasper overlaps
where seams were celery-colored strips from hip to cuff.
Between bells, in a high-school hallway glazed with teenage
hormones, this fly Lion of Judah let me embrace half my heritage
by perforating the shade of his Jamaicanness. All the West
Indian girls wanted to nibble him: as if, in his sheepskin coat,
his torso were a veggie patty tucked in coco bread. He
would lean against a window fingering a medallion
atop his mock neck. With my starved wallet, I could
only eye one of his admirers—doe-eyed Daphne, with skin
the color of freckled-bread pudding. Was checking for her
merely the pursuit of unavailability and its fleeting aromas?
Can’t say, because the next fall I was carted off to classes
with Wallingford’s upper crust, carted  from trying to speak
patois with Rob’s translucent cool.

2.

That next summer off Connor Blvd, I spotted Rob buffing
his mustard-colored British Walkers in front of our old school.
The year before, I would have eloped with a plate of curry goat to hover
near his gold medallion’s intaglio. But now as his hazel eyes—
perched on his tall cheekbones—darted the Boulevard,
Rob seemed more cub than Lion of Judah. He unzipped
a Glad Bag of green buds; dunked his Roman nose. In
-haled and closed his eyes as if he did not want me
to see how vision can be abducted by memory. Eyes
open, he held out Sinsemilla, tried to cajole me with its
vanilla bean, basil hint. Said he wanted to open a store
in the Valley. His deep, slow patois Upful. Righteous.
My wallet had put on some weight: so I loaned him three
hundred dollars.

3.

Once a towel has been soaked by your shadow, and you
introduce your elbows to the sands of Gun Boat Beach,
you’ll realize warmth is born of two sources: the heat
stepping on your breath and the heat hammering your back.
But rather than argue with either of those aches, I rolled
on my side and understood Rob had been a unique
beach where, for a year, I was burnished by the shade
of his Jamaicanness.

David Mills is the author of the small press bestseller The Dream Detective (2010). Two of his poems have recently appeared in Jubilation! (2012), an anthology edited by Kwame Dawes, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Jamaica’s independence.

Jonathan Bellot

Teal light so so teal from that old bat-flecked streetlamp down the street shining into the window of the abandoned white stone-and-wood house well abandoned except for on the bed where Salvinia Miguel de Cervantes and the nameless man she has found since the world ended are lying down almost chest to chest, you may have experienced a jolt there at my informing you the world has ended and in fact the simple explanation is that there are many worlds not even including the thousands of universes outside our own but simply the worlds within ourselves and even outside for each of us is a complete world accessible perhaps to none but ourselves a statement that if true should be impossible to proclaim but some truths may simply seem impossible, zounds, and anyhow for Salvinia Miguel de Cervantes and the few other residents of the distant Caribbean island of São Carlos who are still alive those self-worlds have been wrenched apart like an only child from the harbor of her mother’s arms or like a beer bottle shattering in slowwwwwwwwwwwww motion and if you are wondering how Salvinia Miguel de Cervantes has ended up where she is, you must first understand that one Sunday but two days from when I began this piece of breathless concentration the distant Caribbean island of São Carlos was unceremoniously visited by a tourist no one had expected to see, a colossal coconut-yellow flying saucer shaped precisely like a Belle Epoque dinner plate, its body glittering in the afternoon dullness by three rings of amber green and blue lights like those you see on airport runways, now believe me the sky was simply empty at first except for some gray clouds peppering a sky as blue as Mega Man’s armor and then all of a sudden a UFO appears hovering above the sea in the harbor in the capital city and hover it did for much of the afternoon and by this point a few people had begun to evacuate into the impregnable walls of churches and to relatives’ homes in the mountains and to the vast limestone caves normally reserved for fruit bats and tourists and onto the white yachts and dinghies painted every color of the rainbow heading out to sea to escape, a great quantity of these excursions spurred on by the stentorian ravings of a mad emigrant from Alabama who somehow acquired a yellow megaphone and began to shout out theories The Bermuda Triangle extends as far as the Azores I always knew extraterrestrial life forms were involved but no one listened the fools everyone evacuate by boat and do not trust your compass head for the nearest island or Europe if possible and all be prepared for the return of our Lizard King while another man this one a zealot from Fatima in Portugal his eyes wide and red his gaunt face juddering claimed that the UFO was nothing less than Jesus Christ’s chariot for His Second Coming and its flashing lights were the eyes John of Patmos described in such profusion in Heaven through his extraordinary visions even though the rest of the day’s events had not gone according to John’s prophecies Do not flee my people but stay and pray for your salvation before this vision of incomprehensible glory and so some did for a while until it got too hot and sticky but most of the islanders decided in fact to go to town from wherever they were and watch the flying saucer up close and take endless cell phone pictures while the police rallied together the local defense force and tried to create a wall of soldiers in front of the civilians in case something happened but it was too late since the silent hovering aircraft had already been the impetus to create Carnival many months in advance since women had brought their red grills to cook chicken and breadfruit while people were flooding into the hotel bars to buy overpriced beer and soon amidst the smoke from the grills the Carnival trucks themselves arrived with their skyscraper speakers and music began to blast and the soldiers started snapping their fingers and nodding their heads as they stood patrol for many of these people were emigrants from the other islands and knew how to put on a damn good fete, nonetheless, nothing happened until the sun began to sink, making the UFO’s metal gleam like liquid, and an icy drizzle sent the women with processed hair running for cover, but this was when the flying saucer sprang into action or more accurately two hatches opened one on the left and one on the right of the aircraft and out of each snaked a long gray metallic tube with a terrible claw at the end and then a chamber opened below the flying saucer in the center of the rings of flashing lights and out came two nets nothing very original as far as UFO designs go but quite effective for capturing and massacring people which was precisely what began to happen what the shit is that those things look like arms shit run run grab her run run no time just run oye move the fuck out my way the long arms with claws on the sides of the flying saucer zoomed into the crowd and began snatching human beings amidst all the screams and who was not snatched was sliced in two or three or seven and then from the rings of lights came a searing ray of orange that turned all it touched into smoldering black powder and within two hours the island was a disaster of flames and dried blood how absurd how utterly ridiculous and I would well agree except that this particular line of unmanned aircraft is a well-known interworldly menace created many decades ago in the universe of Xcea by a clan of ruthless robotic engineers and no one knows why it chose São Carlos in this universe if there was any choice involved at all or why this absurd device almost worthy of the Trojans’ horse has since disappeared, to the sorrow and fury of news reporters for news thrives on distanced violence to exist, all they have are images of a smoking island hardly anyone had heard of and you bet people are sending their help by making endless Facebook groups that proclaim their virtual pity for a day, anyway ahem no one knows if the flying saucer will return but who we must return to is Salvinia Miguel de Cervantes, who was one of the few to have escaped on one of the whale-watching ships this one heading to St. Kitts, surely this was a monster the white boat had never expected to see even if Ahab had been at its wheel the ship was flooded with people like slaves packed into a hold and Salvinia had barely even made it on because of the rush of people piling into the already-chockablock boats, she had been dragging her little girl Simonetta with her by the wrist so hard that the girl had started to cry to banshee-wail and these tears may well have helped her cut through the throng and get onto the boat, what surprising courtesy one sometimes sees, and now here she is in St. Kitts in a room with a man she just met the night before, the evening she arrived he must have taken pity on her fatigued cheeks amidst all the chaos of the people suddenly arriving in the harbor for she had truly been about to drop down flat on her face Excuse me ma’am do you need some assistance she would have ordered away a creature with so beggarly an exterior except that his eyes were poor in a different way and perhaps she was simply too exhausted but one thing led to another and soon people were even evacuating St. Kitts in their fear of the UFO turning on them next soon perhaps all the world would evacuate to elsewhere though all runners must eventually run into the insurmountable, but this man was too poor to flee, he in fact had only a tiny shack with shower curtains covering his windows and a powdery asbestos roof, but he took Salvinia and Simonetta there for the night gave them a sad and grateful dinner of day-old penny bread with cheddar and some Kool-Aid and then a cup of beer for Salvinia and himself he asked no questions but only said I just happy you and your little girl still alive her English was not so great because she had come from a Portuguese-and-some-Spanish-speaking home but she understood enough of what he said and nodded with a smile, he was the color of old coconut husk his hair a small garden of gray and white curls and his face was weathered by difficulty but she felt good anyway just by the way he smiled, never would she have imagined herself in a house alone with a man well since she’d had Simonetta anyway but how life changes she was almost forgetting the UFO already from the newness of her surroundings or perhaps she was just too shocked anyhow the first night he slept on the floor and she and her girl together and now tonight after she has slept in and helped him wash his clothes in the pipe and had a dinner of corned beef he is inside her, while Simonetta sleeps on the rocking chair because she has never done so before Look Mommy it’s so ancient can I try it out and before you know it she was fast asleep, It’s a magical chair from Nevis the man had told her, and Salvinia let the man into his own bed with her not sure why she was doing it she still hadn’t even asked him his name knew next to nothing about him and she had left her husband four months ago yet here she was she knew he wanted her before she even felt his erection in the bed and she let him inside her But no further we can’t wake up Simonetta and he chuckled It’s a miracle I even got it up so they stayed their bodies wrapped like strange gifts in the teal light from that bat-peppered streetlamp Old Faithful he called it because it has never gone out since I’ve been alive unlike all the others in this cheap street after a while he could no longer sustain it and she chuckled because he left her of his body’s unintentional accord, she swallowed, drew his arm over her, kissed his hand, and lay with her eyes closed against his chest because that was all she needed right now nothing more, she would see what happened in her world tomorrow but for now there was nothing else and if she was obliterated right this moment by some terror from the unknown, Well, it wouldn’t be so very bad, she mused, not so bad at all, of course she really wanted to fall asleep because she knew the longer she stayed awake the closer she would be to realizing the magnitude of the outer-space empty densities around her, that she had not stopped running even as she lay silent in a bed, perhaps we are always running even in our emptiest dreams, and as she thought of these things and the man she had left and Simonetta she kept expecting Old Faithful’s electric flow to stop as the UFO reappeared with its silent inexplicable bloodlust but nothing happened even as her heart thudded thudded thudded, the teal light illumed the man’s eyes too because he could not sleep either, and then she smiled again briefly and closed her eyes and vowed not to sleep, in fact, so as to hold onto this strange and beautiful moment as long as she could, let herself drift through that teal sea until she became a mermaid, then Simonetta was suddenly at her bedside tapping her elbow Oh shit but the girl only asked with trembling eyes if she could scoot in because she had had a bad dream about the thing in the sky and she felt cold and damp, Salvinia stared at her for a moment, the man had already turned onto his back with downcast eyes and then Salvinia said Of course, come right in, the girl slid right in between them, her body flecked by the teal, Are you still scared, her mother said fingering her daughter’s braids, No, Simonetta said, well, yes, a little, Let me see if I have any cocoa sticks, the man said getting out of bed but Simonetta said No, stay, I feel better like this, and Salvinia and the man looked at each other, and then they lay back down and smiled, the world outside rasping with an old wind and the cries of insect bats and filled with that strange and lovely light for as long as the night would last, perhaps there are hundreds of Salvinias waking up in hundreds of undisturbed São Carloses in hundreds of universes right now, by all the gods, what worldliness, and yet, even if just one Salvinia and one Simonetta and one nameless Kittian are laying in such a poor triangle on a hard bed bathed in teal as we have here, well, I’d say that that’s all that’s all, for now.

Jonathan Bellot holds an MFA in fiction from Florida State University, where he is currently also pursuing a PhD in creative writing. His work has appeared in the New Humanism, Transnational Literature, BIM: Arts for the Twenty-First Century, Belletrist Coterie, Domnitjen Magazine, and Black Lantern Publishing.

I was 9, 10, out floating
on the waves in
the plastic boat
Me and Iván Karanglo
The white boy blue-eyed
blond
lived in a house made out of goat
dung and dead cacti
with two families;
Karanglo thought I was a millionaire,
kept taking my guilders—
Grandma Naomi gave me those—
to invest in the video arcade machines
in their pixellated violence

Floating, floating, we start arguing
about money, wealth and poverty
God and the World
I insisted I was not the richest
9-year-old man on earth
He tried to strangle me
I assaulted back howling,
we like two mating
conglá seasnakes or
Raton di Anochi collosal
fruit bats locked
in mortal combat
over the nocturnal dates

(Hector, Achilles
Cain and
I always want to be Cain
Silly Iván was Cain now)

It wasn’t my fault
the poor boy
was so poor
he ate conglas and the winged rats, the raton
with the whole famiyah, the family

We could no longer see
the frolicking
tourist big bellies on Divi Divi Beach
shining bright with bottled aloe
tan-oils
nor the big dolo penis lighthouse where
people go to sniff cocaine while star-gazing
up Orion’s skirts,
warn ships
that will be marooned anyway
Food for carnivorous Braincoral,
tempest or no tempest,
if they anchor
anywhere near here
He stood up raising the rubber-sheathed
oar to the smiling Sun
white coconut film in the creases
of his hairless armpits

I am always deeply annoyed
when the Sun smiles

“Cease your troubles!
No troubles in sunshine and
Momo Sea!”
we heard a voice thunder
from an old throat
It was too sincere, too
sun-dried with wisdom
and Royal palm-wine
to be the mocker Sun

It was the true ferryman
his hair full of Calabash
his body scarred with
the love of blades,
with tattoos
burns
diseases he had picked up
in rainforests of Grenada,
during guerilla days,
the kiss-bite of a
Ba’dan winged Python
on his ankle
He tore us apart
stepping onto
our loosed barge
from his plastic kayak

“You think you
can survive this manner?
You think Momo, Jah
and Yeman-jah,
Lord Pachamama
like you boys quarreling
this way?”
He rowed us back to the shore
we had to lie down
catacomb docks overhead
“lie down low
like a warrior” the ferryman laughed

(I will spend
half
the sick keneppa berry
of eternity
studying his
nameless,
illiterate heresy
I knew then
his gospel
and mixture of names
tasted like
Kadushi-cactus green needle
fortune-lit up with momo-sea-shine,
biting sweetly my tricep.

Arturo Desimone, born in 1984 in Oranjestad, Aruba, of immigrant parentage, is a writer of fiction, a poet, and a playwright. His poems have appeared in the literary quarterly Brown Critique and at the blog A Tunisian Girl. His visual artworks, comparable to hieroglyphs in nature, will soon be exhibited in Krakow, Poland, and in Paris. At the moment he is traveling and working on a novel, despite life in transference

Now, my thirtieth year
a possibility, phantom body of a bony girl,
passage through rooms like evolving
doors or landscapes, shrunken
with consequences.
Push against memories
like softening hymens.
Persistence of my childish lament or curse
of my guilt, early, like the church.
This ability to smell out rain.
To remember a year when
bullfrogs warned in the grass,
but not the warnings
themselves, no, never those.
A day when I held back
my head in laughter & it rained through wet leaves.
That night when something was
killed. Those other nights when
something was dead.
Or dying, then I danced
on the graves of poems never read,
I wanted to say more. Growing older
before mirrors. Growing younger
one August, by the sea.
Roughening & smoothing
my bones according to the
rhythm, according to the need
for sharp reminders.
Dinner with my inexplicable sister, saying,
“We are getting old.”
School nights we turned thin
pages, current failed us & the clearness
made of a mother by candlelight,
the historical lessons, always
very English & sad.
Tropical night & the milling
wind beneath a breadfruit tree,
when all our silences, a whole
family of them, the dismal one,
the dreadful one, the one I carry.
Too early for the triumph
of thirty, to count these years
backwards or sideways,
the way the desperate do, holding
their heads back in laughter, drinking rain
through wet leaves.

Angler

Here is the afternoon rain that comes,
the water Olympiad in the sky, the
recreational flash of lightning.

I watch Aquarius pour what is valuable
onto the botoxed face of the earth,
wonder what will become of Memory,
that beached mermaid who sits on my porch,
angling in the street for her dinner.

I interrogate the space of a window,
looking for her & find her gone.
She has swum on down the flooding road
no doubt, gone to find her way amidst
the lively debris of the games.

I sit before a vanity fragile as coral
bones, wash myself in the mirror’s silver-
cold basin. Alas, I am not the fairest.
The mythical creature has relieved me.

If I am too young for grief, then what
is this tender moment, what are these
dry, oceanic longings, these bottom-
dwelling poems?

Ah, Memory, she was fairest, Memory,
she was perfect, sprightly & not at all
promiscuous as she would appear;
no decorative object, she had her brass,
like money, lovely from head to tail,
& supposedly changeable.

Tonight, I am presented with the thunder
of memories, I am gifted with the angler
fish’s enraged jaw. I extract each
razor-sharp tooth of despair, lay all crowns
before me, like jewels, on the nautical

Tablecloth. This quiet night unfurls,
billows around me like a sail I pause
& listen for the mermaid: maybe she is
desperate; maybe she is hungry;
perhaps she will return.

Too young for grief, but I know we return
to places that have fed us before, the
generous water spots of our memory,
our most graceful tackles & the gliding,
johnboat days of our forgetting.

We return to the houses we shared
with unknown poets, hours when we
dined, to the watery tournaments of
bait & switch, the line that saved us,
the love that sank us.

Now, the rain gasps, pauses. I hear
the mermaid struggle through waters.
The moon, that night-fisherman,
watches her return.

Summer Edward was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago and currently lives in Philadelphia. Her poems and art have appeared in literary magazines such as BIM: Arts for the 21st Century, the Columbia Review, tongues of the ocean, and Philadelphia Stories. She holds a master’s degree in reading, writing, and literacy from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the founder and managing editor of Anansesem, the Caribbean children’s literature e-zine, and a 2012 Cropper Foundation Caribbean Creative Writers Workshop participant.

Instead of learning to swim, I leave his side,
just for a moment, to walk into the freedom
in the waves. I want to wash my scared away,
starting with the dirty soles of my feet, so I let
the ocean hold my body and pull me back—
I join in the laughter of her wild urgency.
When the water turns murky and deep,
silently she releases her grip. I do not fight,
I pretend I am still and dead.
Sinking, I call for Uncle, who warned me
the call to freedom isn’t worth the
trouble it may bring.

I Don’t Know the Caribbean

I only know what Granny says

and sugar cane,

though I’ve never pulled
the stalk from the root to lick raw.

I know Carnival, but I can’t wine my hips
to the steel pan beat since

I’ve never heard calypso.
I don’t know how to pick fruit

from a tree and play cricket
in the yard with produce

or drink from coconuts,
its water falling in the corner of my lips,

because I don’t know my mouth,
what to make of this flavor on my tongue,

how to speak in a voice that’s not
American, that sweet and bitter taste.

Erika Jeffers has an MFA in poetry from Queens University of Charlotte. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Kweli Journal, Callaloo, and the Newtowner.

(An excerpt from Diana McCaulay’s forthcoming novel, Huracan. See Part I here.)

The tavern was not marked by name or sign. Two saddled horses were tethered outside and a black man stood in the sun, holding a pair of horses harnessed to a buggy. He was dressed much more formally than the man on the jetty, in black trousers, a white shirt with too-long sleeves, and a vest, trimmed with pearl buttons. Despite the lavish attire, his feet were bare. Zachary and Trevor Manning went inside.

The tavern was cool and crowded. Zachary recognized some of his shipmates. The floor was dirt, packed hard. Small wooden windows with slats were propped outwards, letting in narrow bands of sunshine. The walls were thick stone, with remnants of plaster clinging in places. Tables were scattered about, most seats taken. Men were clustered around a rudimentary bar and it was clear many were well on their way to drunkenness.

“There. I see two seats,” Manning said. He led Zachary to a table, already occupied by two white men. “Good morn, gentlemen,” Manning said. “May we join you?”

“Help yourself, Sir. We’re leaving now anyway.” The men were well dressed in expensive cotton clothes in pale colors. Their wide-brimmed hats were hung on hooks behind them, their boots were polished, and their faces were reddened and peeling.

“So, Zachary Macaulay, I presume you have enough money to get you to Bonnie Valley?” Manning said, sitting down at the table.

“Sir, I am grateful for your kindness, but my father told me it is unwise tae divulge such details tae strangers.”

Trevor Manning laughed. “Your father was right, lad. You seem to be well schooled—your English is excellent. He did well by you. From Scotland, are you?”

“Aye. Inverary.”

“There are many Scots in the Indies.”

“How long have ye been here, Mr. Manning?” Zachary said.

“How long? Oh, close on ten years. I go back and forth every few years. It’s a long trip, but the climate here suits me. It doesn’t suit everyone. Now, what shall we eat?”

A woman approached their table. Her skin was a rich brown with copper highlights and her hair was hidden under a bright blue headscarf. “You genklemen havin the turtle stew?” she said, eyes averted. Zachary had to listen closely to understand her.

“Turtle?” he said to Trevor Manning. “I’ve not eaten turtle.”

“Sea turtle,” said Manning. “Very good.” He looked up at the woman. “That sounds capital. And a flagon of your best grog.” The woman nodded and left them. Zachary thought of pond turtles he had seen in boggy places—how much meat would such a creature contain? But these were sea turtles and he remembered seeing them from the jolly boat, their brown and tan shells glistening. They were much bigger than pond turtles, and he wondered if they would taste like fish.

“So how do you plan to get to Bonnie Valley?” Manning asked, removing his hat and stretching his legs.

“I dinnae ken, Sir.” Zachary felt stupid. “But I believe I have enough money to buy a horse. How much would a horse cost?”

“That very much depends on the horse. We’ll go in search of a mount when we’ve eaten. Everything will look different then. I suggest you sell your sea chest. It will be too difficult to transport.”

“There are things of value in it,” Zachary said.

“Then we will have to find someone with a carriage or buggy going your way.”

“Will that be hard?”

“It could be. You may have to stay here for awhile.”

Zachary said nothing. The men at the bar were becoming louder. He saw a couple of them grab for the darkie woman who was serving food. She wriggled from their grasp, her eyes downcast, and put two steaming bowls on a nearby table. The men crowed with laughter.

“Is she a slave, Sir?” Zachary asked Trevor Manning, nodding at the woman.

“Probably. She could be one of those with more than six children, so no more labour in the fields. She could also be free.”

“How do slaves become free?”

“All manner of ways. She could have purchased her freedom. Her master could have granted it. She looks like a mulatto; maybe a quadroon—perhaps she has a white . . . ah, protector . . . and he bought her freedom. ”

“A mulatto?”

“Child of a white man by a Negress. A quadroon is the child of a mulatto mother, with a white father.”

Zachary found himself excited. The tavern carried an atmosphere of danger and licentiousness, of rules discarded. He understood what was meant by Trevor Manning’s euphemism—protector. Lover, he thought. Lover and concubine. Lover and slave. He thought of the parlor at their house in Inverary, with its faded carpet and solid furniture, where his sisters sat in the afternoons, doing needlework or reading the Bible to each other, perhaps practicing scales on the piano. None of his sisters would have been allowed to see a man without a chaperone. Martha, of course, had ignored the rules; now she was in confinement, and he was in the Indies, punishment for his cover-up of her transgressions. But the brown woman, the mulatto, she was a different order of female altogether. She might be free or still enslaved, but Zachary was sure any man could have her. He imagined her laughing, with her head thrown back and her breasts bare. He squirmed in his seat.

Soon she returned, carrying a tray. He wanted to pull her into his lap and slip his hands under her skirt. His erection was insistent. He tried to meet her eyes, but she avoided him. She set the tray down and unloaded two large bowls of a rich stew. There was a platter of round golden cakes, cut into quarters, and a flagon of an amber liquid. The brown woman set down two mugs and the cutlery. She bowed her head and left them. The smell of the food was intoxicating. He felt he had wandered into a place of sin, where the pleasures of the flesh held sway. God, give me strength, he prayed, although despite his father’s insistent tutelage, he was not sure he believed in God.

The two men ate. The turtle stew was peppery and nourishing. The meat had a faint greenish cast. “What is this thing?” Zachary asked of the fried cakes.

“Cassava,” Manning answered.

“What is cassava?”

“A root. If not properly prepared, it can be poisonous. It’s what passes for bread here. Flour doesn’t generally survive the sea journey, although a few people bring it in from the Americas.”

The grog burned Zachary’s throat and his head swam. “Rum,” Trevor Manning said. “From the sugar cane.”

They finished everything on the table. Exhaustion overwhelmed Zachary. He had not slept a full night in months, nor eaten such delicious food. Although a harsh and potent liquor had been available on the Prospero, he had not touched it. Now he was in Jamaica and there were turtles to eat, turtles the sea gave up easily, and cassava from the land, and rum from the sugar cane, and brown women who had to carry out his bidding. Perhaps it would not be so bad to stay in Montego Bay for a few days. He felt his eyes closing. All he wanted was to succumb to the demands of his body.

“Falling asleep, young ’un? Only to be expected. I intend to stay the night here and set out early on the morrow. Shall we see if rooms are to be had in the town?” Manning said.

Zachary allowed him to take charge. A small lodging house was located with rooms like cells, but each one had a bed covered in rough white sheets, and a table with a basin of water and a jug. Two darkie boys placed his chest at the end of the bed. He tore off his clothes and splashed his face with water. Naked, he lay on the bed in a tumult of sexual arousal and masturbated. Afterward, sleep claimed him instantly, and he slept with his body washed in a sheen of sweat, his hand around his penis and his semen drying crusty on his stomach. When the mosquitoes found him at dusk, he did not stir. He slept for fifteen hours straight.

 “D’ye ken the name of the river?” Zachary asked.

 “Martha Brae,” Manning said. “It runs through Bonnie Valley. Soon we will head inland.” Zachary felt a jolt hearing his older sister’s nickname. His long sea journey and present surroundings made him feel his beloved sister was someone from his babyhood, a relative who had spooned mush into his mouth and held him on her shoulder until he burped, a relationship too long in the past to matter. He tried to see her face in his mind, but he could not.

“Who was Martha?” he asked.

“There’s a legend about an Arawak princess who led Spanish conquistadores to their death in a cave.” Manning said.

“How did they die in a cave?”

“They drowned. Sometimes the caves are dry, but sometimes they are filled by underground rivers.”

The two men had left Montego Bay the previous day and had spent the night in the busy coastal town of Falmouth. Zachary had bought a sturdy bay mare, broken, the dealer explained, both for the saddle and the carriage. He had also purchased a harness and a small wagon for the sea chest, which the mare drew behind her. “That’ll make for slow going, to be sure,” Manning had said, shaking his head. “Still, you’ll be able to see the countryside. I’m going in your general direction; I’ll ride with you to the turnoff to Bonnie Valley. Then you’re on your own, but the road is easy to mark and you’ll find your way.”

Zachary had found his coolest clothes and his hat. He was covered in mosquito bites. Manning had laughed when he saw him after the first night. “It’s a West Indian rite of passage,” he said. “You’ll get used to them. Ask your employer for a mosquito net and tuck it under your bedding. And get a house slave to fumigate your room before you retire—mosquitoes don’t like smoke.”

Zachary was happy to be astride the mare after the confinement of the ship. The freedom of his journey, the adventure of it, made him want to laugh out loud. The road followed the contours of the coast and when it lifted, the travelers could see over the coastal vegetation to the sea. The boy had journeyed thousands of miles by ship and had not seen water of such varied colors. He could not swim, but he wanted to throw himself into the sea.

“See where the waves break?” Manning had asked. “That’s the reef. Many ships find themselves dashed to pieces on those rocks. Let’s try a trot, see if that wagon of yours turns over. If we don’t go faster, you’ll have to sleep in the bush tonight.” Zachary kicked the mare into a trot and he was pleased when she broke into a long, low stride that would eat up the miles. What would he call the mare? He thought of the Prospero. Back in Scotland, he had taught himself Greek and Latin and read much of Shakespeare. The mare would be Miranda, he decided.

It was cooler the faster they went. Zachary watched how Manning took advantage of the shade, guiding his horse from one side of the dirt road to the other. The horses’ hooves raised puffs of dust. Huge trees lined the road and Zachary wished he knew their names. “D’ye ken the name of that tree?” he asked Manning, pointing to a large tree with a peeling bark.

“No,” Manning said, uninterested.

The road began to leave the coast, and the forest was dense. The surface of the track became rutted and their progress slowed. A flock of bright green parrots exploded from the tree tops. The horses bolted and before Zachary could bring Miranda to a halt, the wagon tipped over. Luckily, the sea chest was strapped to the wagon. Miranda reared against the sudden dead weight and Zachary jumped off, holding her bridle and speaking softly to her.

Manning whistled. “I’ll wager that’s not the last time you’ll be righting that wagon. You’d best do it on your own, lad. I’ll not be with you much longer.”

Zachary threw the tethering rein over Miranda’s neck. She was still snorting and stamping. “Shush,” he said. “Quiet now.” He walked behind her and tried to right the wagon. He could not move it. Within seconds, his clothes were drenched with sweat. Mosquitoes gathered around his head in a cloud. He wanted to cry.

“Think, lad. You’re far from civilization now. There are few to help on the road,” Manning said.

Zachary sat on the bank. It was hopeless. He could not even get himself from the ship to the plantation. He wanted to go home. Manning waited, still mounted, under a tree with a large grey trunk, small canopy, and buttress roots. “I know the name of this one,” he said, conversationally, looking upwards. “It’s a cotton tree. The darkies say they’re haunted.” Shut your mouth, Zachary thought.

They waited. Miranda put her head down and strained to reach the grass, but the wagon held her immobile. Her flanks were dark with sweat. I cannot stay here, Zachary thought. There must be something. He heard his father’s voice in his mind: You will amount to nothing and I wash my hands of you.

Zachary got up and unhooked the harness. He led Miranda to the bank and tethered her, allowing her to graze. He unstrapped the sea chest and it fell out of the wagon. He heaved the wagon upright and reharnessed Miranda. Then he unpacked the chest, laying his possessions in the dust and weighting them with a stone. He dragged the chest to the wagon and inched it up over the side. “Shush,” he said to Miranda, as her head flashed up. He waited. She flicked her ears and after awhile, lowered her head to the grass. Zachary pitted his strength against the chest and it slid into the wagon. He collected all that he had brought with him and repacked the chest. He replaced the straps that held it fast. He checked his knots and shook the chest. The straps held the chest immobile. And then he untied Miranda and swung into the saddle. For a moment, the world flickered black and yellow and he feared he would faint. His muscles had wasted on the long sea voyage. His clothes were soaked right through and the heat was like punishment. “You brought books,” Manning observed. Zachary said nothing.

“Let’s go, then,” Manning said and they rode on.

Diana McCaulay is a Jamaican writer and environmental activist. Her second novel, Huracan, will be published by Peepal Tree Press in July 2012.

. . . 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.

Charcoal Monochrome

July first, 10 pm, rumblings, flashes, fireworks:
You’d think that after three years the smell of maple wood
and honey smoke would lift the downward spiral

not provoke the cock-set cough of burning black sage bush,
coalpot centred in the closed bedroom to smoke the mosquitoes out first;
not evoke West Indian Reader nights,

playing picture or no picture on a perwinkled door stoop,
page opening by chance on Hugh Cameron’s A Lonely Life—
a wizened woman cradling scant firewood,

panier bare, selvedge sere,
explosion of her blood-red shawl, sole highlight
against a pink pigeon-breasted crepuscule;

not invoke in the gloaming, yawning kitchen window propped
half-staff, pearly prism-ed light transmuting inner lepais thatch
from Scot to classic Boscoe Holder still life painting:

jug-eared coalpot, mounded with blunt quartz of coal;
corkscrew of gazette paper; fuzz of ash nickeling cleaver;
pointy shards of tinder; curled peelings of cassava;

pewter pitcher, horned spout; silver halo, condensed milk tin-cup;
speckled mortar, granite pestle protruding like a dislocated thumb;
rugged torchon, grits of sand cresting stilt-legged washstand;

villi feathering sooty corners, clambering spidery V-greased gutters;
and soft contoured mid-height above, a double-breasted dove-
grey form, fingers pouched at mouth smudged with itty-bitty edge of coal

You’d think by now I’dve dipped my hand and done the necessary genuflection,
lightened those gilt greys with confession and a good act of contrition;
(Will you think of me, and love me / As you did once long ago)

Perhaps next year, my fourth year, when palm shells race up the sky,
to rocket trunks with bursts of coconuts, my chants will be as loud,
thanks to transposing old anthems with new chromatic metronomes

The Beach
(for Lennox Brown)

Yet another Kew Gardens behind this groyne of beach
a queen, a king, a union, further down, a Kensington—
salvages, this anomie for replicas, selections of empires,
Stonehenges, Tajmahals, recurrent Chinatowns.

The fronting lake grins and bears accumulating silt,
suppurating, giving grudgingly to those who
on a dying evening come to pace this boardwalk,
then go inland to lay down shield and sword,

facing the convergence of millennial waters from all the cardinals,
even the brutal baptisms of line-crossings way down south; who
come not to judge the grey man kissing the green woman (not his wife);
nor Mary, hair let down, bra loose, bridge in hand, resting her gums,

nor sniff the trailing whiff accusing the teenagers; nor notice
the badges in black-short pants with walkie-talkies cycling by.
But leaving Leuty and the dog run, pass the gaping bandstand,
trail fingers over the commemorative plaque, wondering

who’s the dark child in the drinking fountain and where’s the Native;
smell the white hyacinth perfuming the round Gardener’s Cottage,
swallow the saliva accreting in the throat gland, conflicted,
awed at the power of salvages to unify yet nullify;

and super-glad to see you in the missed of this, walking briskly
round Queen’s Park on the cycle track, up near Kilarney
just before you take the Y on Maraval; and I hail you out,
Lennox! Come leh we go down Macqueripe and buss a lime!

and you jump in and we heading for a real salt-water bath;
going past the tall blue Guardian Spirit with the silver wand,
on this make-believe beach, boardwalk, in these Q-Gardens, Magnificent
Seven in the distance, we the only salvages in a different place and time.

Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, currently located in Toronto. She has three collections of poetry, two novels, and one collection of short fiction. She is published in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, World Literature Today, Callaloo, Sisters of Caliban: Contemporary Women Writers of the Caribbean, the  Massachusetts Review, the New Theater Review, Wasafiri, Jouvert: A Journal of Post-Colonial Studies, Caribbean Tales—Literature Alive, and the Caribbean Writer.