Kwasi Shade
They said his mother was an Obeah woman who came from far up
in the mountains. She made a rain in Morvant so implausible
the people called her name in vain and
she was never seen again.
Blood docked grave on the walls,
drought slipstream, a floating box beckons
graffiti on the faces of strange people;
faces vandalised with no reason for concern of rain striking man
dead in the hills and there was neither will nor way around it.
Sirens alert us straw goliaths who bear our dead,
death comes with running.
You should hear them squalor
like fowls early beckoning a better day.
Jamet braving Rain.
We were standing by Picton standpipe that day
when he finally broke open
his mouth, brave, and spoke a fire roaming Picton's uneasy canopy.
His voice too stood up like squalor.
Centrifugal gulley plains ran,
the cold was his and
guns hidden in the plastic jungle
where children once played, carrying oxide, blood and shame,
these rains
were ours to take.
Mother's gossip
cascaded hillside memories, there was always trouble,
in pain, and she pain in this country;
they rear the beast like rain.
Our houses clamored in space
like ice floundered with;
a ravine formed by the action of water;
a noisy position on the off side between point and the slips;
Injustice was a tradition the complexion of Hell too;
On which,
the verdant remains of goodness
when it breaks open again, brave,
struck with such violence, it became,
Hell was in the mind of the
pervaded, dead, thriving squalor, rain;
dead in the Parliament,
dead on the hills;
dead among people
walking, as
dying to be dead.
The pouring sentiment
of a bouquet
of a shallow breath wrung cold
in a deed left terse, for dogs,
we swallow,
for people to wreath,
for Hell to mourn the grief
of mothers who never get their turn
to rain implausibly.
They said his mother was a powerful Obeah woman from up in the
hills. They said she planted a fire in his mouth so tall when
she had him and is so the Dragon bring rain in the hills;
Talking afire to all who dared know of him, the king of Hell.
Swam Beauty
No one regrets when,
the bay is sleeping; tired/
tucked sombre, drunk, skirt lifted,
the bled weather gone deep, a ripped blouse,
the sounds of soft,
ghosts so it may go certain.
If waved in the way it spins
the heart like a crucifix; she was
vindictive, swallowed, iron and
happenstance whale shackled upon
a hungry belly swelling sea.
A name, bauble
moss in sandy deeds.
No one egress when
a flight of laughter sheaves in
the sea has lost its legs
cracked ashore elsewhere downward,
without right to river,
the wings of a smiling wind, men overboard
in another sky may bode better
for lurid boatswain.
If known in the heart it kills;
this body branded kept a fluke flaneur
as a study in sail tradition
panting, burning cities, dead, ‘whore’;
coasts made
turgid otherwise
light pollution is this woman
once to get to the end of you if/
then
this text appears on her dead.
A broken xylem stretched a canvas
for meme culture, on this
Rain wrung placid; death rings an ocean falling:
“man is the measure of all things dead”
And you, looking,
see her again; nothing more than something said.
A Swam beauty.
Kwasi Shade is an Auteur Sociologist interested in representing the true myriad of Caribbean dichotomies in their stories and testing the parameters of Creole dialect vernacular. They are interested in communicating the Carnival Aesthetic.
Before attending the University of the West Indies to pursue a double major in History and Film, they participated in the Cropper Foundation Writers’ Workshop, Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival’s three (3) part Screenwriters’ Workshop with the Canadian High Commission, Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival’s Producers’ Lab and Monique & Kei’s writers’ retreat. They’ve participated in five group exhibitions; Kirschmann Gallery, New Orleans, “Between Stitches”; Alice Yard, Trinidad, “SYOS”; and Granderson Lab, Trinidad, “For so is so and also” and the Carifesta Exhibition, Trinidad National Museum. Their poetry, short stories and drawings have appeared in Pree Lit, Moko Magazine, Enby Magazine, Tamarind, Pinkwashed zine, Prismatica, and Culturego Magazine.
They were a 2010 Trinidad and Tobago film festival Ident award recipient. In their spare time they sell pelau crackers, mango chips and RumChow. They are also known as ‘A Rainy Weather’ the Jab Griot, a carnival character who sings House Rapso and New Wave Kaiso.
