Ide Thompson
In Our Caribbean
—————————–Christianity
Is another name
—–for
—————————–Death.
Another name
—–for waters
that
—–promise life
—but
—————————–Poison.
The Sun
Jannine T. Horsford
Days here when the sun doesn’t shine – it drenches.
Today I walk from the Small Gate
across Streatham Lodge Road under a sun doling out
heat like a tap turned on: a hot pumping revenge.
The Sky Has Not Changed
Nigel Assam
Further from Empire than my predecessors,
this language I use is mine too.
The same sea they saw
I have seen, and felt too,
in the same way, its familiar salt stinging
in the same wind crossing from the horizon
they saw, its line traced by my eyes
the way theirs followed it too. A wave
is still called a wave and still sounds like a wave
and the Caribbean by any other name
is not the Caribbean. The chaconia
is still called chaconia, and blossoms
and sprays its vermilion each August
in time for Independence Day
and its parade curling through streets.
The sky has not changed.
History is bliss.
A Boston University Creative Writing Graduate, I was born and raised in Trinidad until the age of fourteen, when I emigrated with my parents and sisters to the United States. I have lived in the USA for 30 years and currently reside in Baltimore, MD where I work as a realtor.
a curse to adam
Letitia Marie Pratt
dear husband: you are
doomed to meander
the earth alone
but she will not have you.
you’ve grown wary
of scowling rivers
that flow between
thighs. waters scorch
your tongue
Bring back love: A Lesson Plan and Poem
Ubaldimir Guerra
Course Title: Caribbean Poetry
Topic: Intertextuality in Caribbean Literature
Duration: 2 – 75 minute class sessions
Primary text: Kamau Brathwaite: The Voice of African Presence, Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Supplementary texts:
Selected poetry of Aime Cesaire
Selected poetry of Kamau Brathwaite
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
In the Castle of My Skin by George Lamming
A Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
One Day She Will Ask About Her Name
Anna Corniffe
One day you will tell her
about the way you forgot all the names you meant to give her.
You will tell her about the way your mother moved in your chest
when you saw her face for the first time.
You will tell her
that this is why you changed your mind
and gave her the name
of a woman she would never meet
A woman you knew briefly.
Transmutations
Traci-Ann Wint-Hayles
Life was
searing
And we
overly complacent
Lacking
intuition
Complained for the dense humidity
———————sorrow
——————–slipped
———————effortlessly
—Into our sweat drained pores
One can hardly bear the serenity
It’s raining all over the world
