Arts for the 21st Century

George Goddard

George Goddard

George Goddard is a Saint Lucian writer. In 2016 he published his first collection of poetry, “Interstice”, and is currently working on two other collections. His work has also appeared in BIM: Arts for the 21st Century (2020 & 2019), Interviewing the Caribbean (2020 & 2017), the punch magazine (2018), the Caribbean Writer (2017) and the Missing Slate (2015) among others. Sent Lisi: Poems and Art of Saint Lucia (2014) and Roseau Valley and other poems (2003) are two Saint Lucian anthologies which have featured his writing.

Ingathering

This shrouding quiet. Despite the funereal bell, the distant indiscretion of a backyard cockerel, the measured shuffle of feet, the rustle of attire appropriately dark. And the quaint village church gathering us in supplication, our number small and intimate, joined in mourning

The Bookkeeper

Tall brown & gaunt each day at 6 he would enter the Trou Rouge gap stride with purpose to the pastel pink house with a bar downstairs say “good evening” hoist himself up on one of Ma’ Charles’ bar stools & call for a rum with 3 cubes of ice.

The Day After

Where do we flee to now from Rafah? Deir al-Balah? Jabalia? To mass graves in yards of wasted hospitals? To gutted streets, rubbled homes, emblems of denial of the right to return?

Enbas La Terre II

The jour ouvert, the mardi gras, the numbing dance that does not end this careless costume, its sinews drenched in dew in glitter of sweat, in tatters of flesh will fall away and like your forebears you’ll philosophise «enbas la terre pas ni plaisir», you
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