SARA BASTIAN
Homecoming is not meant to outlive the holidays. For a homecoming to be respectable, it must cease. We must leave again to seek out something better, a place where the waves will not gulp down buildings. A place where the sea minds its manners and knows not to trespass.
ADAM PATTERSON
I was weeding the back garden and thinking about you –
you,
stranger of the fields,
fugitive farmer,
runaway planter marooned from your dirt,
TANICIA PRATT
All my chirren is leave aftee sometime
an once dey does go
dey does don’t come back
sometime
all a mine is come back yinno?
ELIZABETH JAIKARAN
in my parents’ country
they discovered spiders big enough to
eat small dogs.
LAUREN DELAPENHA
During World War II, the mining town of Shinkolobwe was dropped from maps of the Belgian Congo to protect the secrecy of its uranium ore. This rock would later supply most of the raw materials for the world’s first atomic bombs.
I climbed onto land, wringing my brackish hair
dry, like I was squeezing sour over fish
gasping for air. The refuse: splintered
wood, shattered concrete, twisted trees.
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.
We sat in the dark,
Shared drinking water with our neighbors,
Watched historical buildings
Break into communion bread for hurricanes.
I watched my mother pack documents in air tight bags
then cast simple spells in the shape of ‘X’ on the windows
to protect the house against the energies of the coming rain.
Sometimes boundaries impart
new beginnings that still
carry spores of the past.
The scene opens: somewhere on an island she sits in a dark room contemplating what lies beyond....
How to survive a disaster or what insurance companies call a ‘force majeure’. As we’re finding out with the Corona virus pandemic Caribbean countries, like most countries, are ill-prepared. As Angelique Nixon says “The Bahamas is not prepared. Neither are any of our island-nations and countries in this vulnerable region. And neither are most countries really prepared for this kind of disaster— a disaster fueled by climate change, injustice and inequality.”
