Category: Fiction

The Generator or Unlikely Beneficiaries of the Treaty of Breda

But the wind always blows from the east in Anguilla, and sometimes we have had to go for weeks on end without the privilege of information, without the relative freedom awarded to us by a change in the course of the sound waves. During these grim weeks of silence we have continued our petty lives outside the boundaries of time – an insignificant group of refugees struggling to stay together beyond the scope of the victorious.

Read More

Laurel’s Secret

Every morning and every evening Avó came out of her kitchen, synchronizing her daily rhythm to attend to the needs of the garden. She greeted each plant one by one because who else did she have to talk with these days? The scantily dressed telenovela stars on TV hardly minded what suggestion she had to offer. The radio jockeys powered on with too much reggaeton regardless of her protests.

Read More

The Old Guards are Camping Outside

I pack de tools under de house before walking to de door. Is like my head carrying my legs. I cyaan believe how I tired so. Not even on de days when I use to work on de farm I tired so. Nothing in de cooler and I forget to take ice from de farm. Ice or no ice is juice tonight with dry bread. Breadfruit taking too much time to cook. Ain’t nothing like brown dried bread with lime juice in de night when you hungry.

Read More

The Vengeance of Moko

Feria was glad to be home again. He thought back to the days after he left Miami, the placid silence at his New Moorings villa. Not a phone call, not a question from the rental car company about the body-shaped fender dent. Maybe another driver took the blame. Instead, a front-page news headline absorbed all the talk. Local drug dealer receives ‘hit’ in Miami.

Read More

 The Cay

Miss Rolle was running naked across a sandbank that connected two desolate cays. It was low tide, and the sea seemed to have retreated for good. The sand was bone white and impossibly fine, and the sparse foliage that sprung up from the limestone rock curled in patches like coarse hair.

Read More

The School Takeover

Ms. Charlmagne sucked her teeth loud drawing the attention of the other teachers. She didn’t care. They’d been eyeballing her the moment she started teaching at Priscilla Prescod Memorial School with her tight-up skirts and long weaves that she let fall down her back like a white woman or one of dem chabine girls. But she was good at math. That’s why they hired her.

Read More

Looking for Lagahoos

Jane Jr. thinks she has escaped but she hasn’t. She joins a colony of people like us, plastic people who inject smiles into their mouths and their cheeks. She takes pictures in flitting white linens and wide-brimmed hats and posts them to social media. Her partner does not hit her with his fist, or hit her at all, she says on the phone to Jane, while she applies the powder extra-thick below her eye.

Read More

Preludes

Did you know Raymond Chandler lived here in Forest Hill? he asked. I grinned because he remembered Chandler was one of my favourite writers. Suddenly it felt good to be in a car driving along unfamiliar roads with a friend. It was early evening, chilly but not too much, and we saw trees that had turned red, orange and gold. We saw blackbirds on fences, and pigeons on old buildings. There were houses and gardens and libraries and museums.

Read More

Back Bush

I stepped inside, the aroma of the air filling my flared nostrils; it was a combination of mangoes, something floral like perfume, and a dash of myrrh. I walked through the house under the warm orange glow and watched as you threw your heels off your feet, and our heights equalised. You unclipped parts of your pink wig and reached for the zipper at the back of your dress.

Read More

Passover

Daddy used to be a dinki mini chairman himself before the heart attack. (People sey is bad duppy kill him.) He praised the ancestors when Courtney bawn. He never complained when she chose gerreh over dinki. “She’s a leader, Peadove,” he prophesied, “not a follower…”

Read More

Peter 3:15

This wasn’t hero work he was doing. Peter was well aware of that. It was his duty. To reshape destiny by taking a bold step to shift the course of history. While the general public scratched its head, longed out its bottom lip, and prayed that the reckless ride government had placed the country on would miraculously end, Peter had been roped into a grand scheme…

Read More
Loading
Middle Ground, HKW
PREE GOES TO BERLIN!The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) or HKW in Berlin has paid PREE the signal honour of inviting us to inaugurate its Middle Ground literary festival series. Seven Caribbean writers (Marlon James, Josefina Baez, Ingrid Persaud, Kei Miller, Ada Patterson, Vladimir Lucien and Lafleur Belle) along with Isis Semaj-Hall and Annie Paul of PREE will be on the ground in Berlin from August 25-27 with an exciting series of readings, discussions, performances and talks.

Middle Ground: PREE. Caribbean Writing
Interactions – Transactions – Reciprocities
Readings, Discussions, Workshops, Keynote lectures, Performances, Concerts, Party
25.–27.8.2023

Sign Up to Pree

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 6,514 other subscribers

PREE launches Bookmarked and PREE ink

PREE 11

FICTION

 THE CAY
 Ethan Knowles

THE VENGEANCE OF MOKO
Gilberte Farah

PORK
Ryan Cecil Jobson

THE OLD GUARDS ARE CAMPING OUTSIDE
Alicia Valasse-Polius

LAUREL’S SECRET
Mikayla Vieira Ribeiro

THE GENERATOR OR UNLIKELY BENEFICIARIES OF THE TREATY OF BREDA
Montague Kobbé

POETRY

FROM SPAIN TOWN TO OUTER SPACE AND OTHER POEMS
Mbala Mgabo

MOORING
Shauna M. Morgan

STREETSWEEPER
Jenelle Samuels

REWILDING
Luke Elliott

HOLY BLUES AND OTHER POEMS
John Robert Lee

ART-ICLES

DARK EXPOSURE: ROBERTA STODDART’S THE BERTHA ROOM
Isis Semaj-Hall 

SURVIVING THE DREAM
Roberta Stoddart

%d bloggers like this: