Current Issue
tiz zwazo is not
a yellow bird
she don’t belong
choucoune yes
but not she
neither
canaries
but for mutual
expendability
the yellow
shouldered
grass quit does
“Doctor bud a cunny bud,
hard bud fi dead”—Jamaican saying
Eupetomena
macroura
I sight you
bredren
- Love Is a Load: Elsa Opens Up
ivan is de first an only man mi love
ah love de mango sweetness of him
wha ah see him is
not wha him become
hard life and dream
will machette de best of man
Pulling the hose from the vegetable bed
to the flower bed while racing against the
ascendant dusk
my mother’s presence washes over me
(although she has been dead 3 years now)
Hi mommy I say to the evening air
in Big Market
he sold song-birds
big burly black man
Rex Hardsure
passing by never failed
stall “Music of the Forest”
soon got to know him well
sit-down visits while he sold his wares
songs from such peculiar birds
Gus Perrystation famously fixed clocks
got to know him because he did
my grandfather’s gold fob watch
silent for decades in a silken pouch
why not make it work again
he looked at it intensely interested
consulted me about a patient sorely ill
red kite climbing the wind
dancing in the falcon-flighted air
followed down the long connecting twine
to the playing field next door
golden pouis blooming now
little boy is with his dad
think he must be four years old
just after a pleasant dinner
enjoying a glass of Drambuie
the grandchildren were reporting
Zoey painted the moon
Jacob giving his view of Heaven
suddenly in the distance
a long terrible howl
somewhere in the world
opened the window wide one morning
a bird was singing out its heart
right there on a bougainvillea bush
not disturbed by me at all
went on singing bigger than it seemed it could
small golden bird gleaming in the morning
I’d never seen a bird like that
old man waits at the bus stop
looks at his watch looks at the setting sun
blood red over the earth
I leave the dumb country to live in town
close to the nice nurse, Miss Grace, that helped me
cope with my fickle rheumatism.
There is no line marking town from country
nowadays, it’s all a blur with transports
I stumped my toe on a stone, the doctor
gave me powder to stop the wound turning septic.
Next morning the bruise was gone, yet the sky
was black and unhappy as hell.
Not being superstitious, I chalk it down
to circumstance, discounting witchcraft.
(Remembering millions lost in the depths below.)
The sextant declares a few leagues more,
yet still no land in sight.
Just then, a squall swoops down on the rigging
smothering hull and swamping deck.
Pelicans lived in the bay somewhere, I read
but packed up and gone before coal overtook sail.
Oil is boss now polluting the water and
making things worse; slick flows in with the tide.
On a bollard painted green, the colour of hope
Watchers undress budding petals—drop
rot and ruins, recycling her blight
into tempting trees—Edenic crops
under dust’s cursed canvas, Lilith writes
Eve, womb’s crimson, “Go Paint Destiny”.
She glazes light to lingering lines,
A vice I welcome
when pillows invite
me down
to tired sheets
that sheathe
like second skin.
I breathe me
in
my fleece flannel world
warmth softens shards of
judging stares.
The smell,
the sound of all the seasons.
Layers of bodies
rising on crimson,
hard, black and bruised.
You don’t hear yourself.
All around, you see the other.
Up and down, there—another.
(in essence the Norse god of heroic endeavour)
The tallest tales were yours.
The man who would put his hand
In the mouth of a wolf, even if it meant
He’d lose it there; he’d take that chance.
I dreamed us in a Baroque city
strolling a maze of empty streets.
Worn satin-smooth, the stones
gleamed in emerging moonlight.
We discussed a piece of music,
how its sober bass line underlay
a descant spun to tinkle
(on hearing Derek Walcott at UWI)
Freighted with years
his loose-lip pants sus-
pendered,
the weary poet rises
from his front-row seat
proceeds slowly
to the stage