tongues of the ocean » 2009 June Issue

Here is the Poem

webmaster — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:02:27 +0000

Before this was a phrase it was a pebble,
something slippery, something with little teeth,
the bitter of green, the smell of something red,
it makes you sneeze, it hums like falling asleep.
.
Before this was a poem it was a question,
or maybe the desire of a question,
or maybe the desire for something to happen,
the string that tautens when love is about to happen,
the question that taunts when the tongue encounters a pebble,
the name of the taste of something that smells like red.
.
A poem, like love, is always about to happen,
unless it’s already happened. The thing about poems:
poems are impossible, like the colour blue,
and undeniable. The thing about blue:
blue is a mirror, and has nothing to do with poems.
Why does a poem want to be a poem?
The colour blue doesn’t want to be a poem,
but sometimes the poem wants to be heartless as blue,
.
the poem wants to be slick and snug as a pebble,
sharp as small teeth, bitter as tea, and sudden
as love (or a sneeze). And no one knows more than a poem,
and that is where all desires and questions start.
The poem says: here is a pebble, here is blue,
damn your metaphysics, here are you.

•••

Nicholas Laughlin is the editor of The Caribbean Review of Books. His poems have appeared in the Boston Review, Poetry Review (UK), and Poetry Wales, and he is working on a book about Guyana, part travel narrative, part cultural history. He was born and has always lived in Trinidad.

Nicholas Laughlin

The Mango Virgin

webmaster — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:01:03 +0000

He stood on Prince George Wharf
selling mangoes.
I walked apart from the crowd,
yet he knew I was a tourist.
.
He pointed at me.
“You,” he said. “Come here.”
I heard the whisper of chimes
and Bahamian sea in his voice.
I obeyed.
“You never ate a mango, young mama?”
My tongue grew heavy in his presence.
I shook my head. His lips parted
to a gap-toothed smile.
.
“Such a shame,” he laughed.
“You can do many things with a mango.”
The sun threw a slanted gleam
over his salt-and-pepper beard.
He lifted a knife from his cart
then joined the blade to a mango.
Its flesh hissed as it shaped itself
to the knife’s rhythm,
its juices snaking
down the man’s arm.
.
When he finished, the mango slice lay
atop the knife, both bodies
glistening. He lifted the fruit
with his dark brown fingers
to my mouth.
“Eat,” he coaxed.
“You be a mango virgin no more.”
.
The fruit slipped over my lips. I swallowed,
sweetness bathing my tongue and teeth.
I reached into my purse to pay.
“No charge, m’lady. When you learn the mango’s secrets,
you come back to see me.” He winked.
.
I walked away.
The sidewalks changed to clouds,
the human throngs to forests.
I brought the mango to my mouth
and sucked it softly.
I felt like the first woman
tasting God’s tongue.

•••

An earlier version of this poem appeared in the Spring-Summer 2001 edition of Calabash: A Journal of Caribbean Arts and Letters.

•••

Shayla Hawkins lives in Detroit, Michigan and won The Caribbean Writer’s 2008 Canute A. Brodhurst Prize in Short Fiction. She has published poetry, interviews, book reviews and essays in, among other publications, Windsor Review, Carolina Quarterly, Yemassee, Poets & Writers Magazine, and The Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers.

Shayla Hawkins

Charlestown

webmaster — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 04:02:35 +0000

When you get to know the village, it does change face.
A broken lintel gapes at vehicles winding past
The spot where Mohan blest his name in pitch, one night
After a gaff at Sadhu with the boys over
a flask of El Dorado. It is forty years,
……..but the greenheart still peels its paint in tears
dying useless on the block, hoping to be a saint,
better still an angel, hovering above the quiet
that haunts this place, waiting for resurrection day.
…………..
Old eyes dimmed by glare from the sole of these houses
that have not forgotten better times, from within,
when poverty was real and hunger was one crop
away. Them was times boy, when whitewash passed for paint
and Martin Carter spun his verse on silver paper
from cigarette box his boys smuggled through the bars,
to fan the seeds of revolution against the Raj.
That was the first and last time poetry mobilize
to be the vanguard of resistance and man stand like man
………………………………………………………….in its shade.

•••

Mac Donald Dixon is a visual artist, poet, playwright, actor, novelist and theatre director whose work reveals a man hopelessly in love with his country, St. Lucia. He was awarded the Saint Lucia Medal of Merit (Silver) in 1993 for his contribution to literature and photography.

Mac Donald Dixon

Dog Bark/Break the Night

webmaster — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 04:01:34 +0000

Dog Bark/Break the Night
Clap-board houses huddled tight
Clap-board echoes barking tune
Barking echoes silvery moon
.
Moon reflects in puddled rain
Rain collects in open drain
Drain becomes a dog’s best choice
A drink to soothe its breaking voice
.
Dog Bark/Break the Night
Clap-board people huddled tight
Clap-board echoes bursting dream
Of leaving dog, clap-board and stream.

•••

Patrick Rahming is a Bahamian architect, poet, musician, dramatist and storyteller. His poetry has been published throughout the region and his recent work in fiction has continued his reputation as a storyteller.

Patrick Rahming

writers on writers: Patrick Rahming

webmaster — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 04:58:59 +0000

•••

Patrick Anthony Rahming is a Bahamian architect, poet, musician, dramatist and storyteller. Trained in Montreal, Canada in the 1960′s, he has spent forty years performing and writing throughout the American East Coast and the Caribbean. He has won awards as an architect (Governor General’s Awards), actor (DANSA), musician (Timothy Award) and a number of national awards for his contribution to Bahamian society in the literary and performing arts. His poetry has been published throughout the region and his recent work in fiction has continued his reputation as a storyteller. Pat Rahming lives in Nassau, Bahamas with his wife Marilyn.

Patrick Rahming

Still and Maybe More: a Trilogy

webmaster — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 04:57:10 +0000

Saturday
afternoon fights
with/over broken rum bottles
still leave
gaping wounds
and little black children
crying
still think Santa Claus
is white
after two years

To grow
civilised men
feed
upon the foresight/hindsight
of artists
who have the right
to paint
……………sing
…………………….tell
the truth as it hurts
…………………………them
Politicians, materialists
and other anarchists
have the right
to silence
artists

Study the thought
and wonder
……………about the sameness
Study the past
and wonder
……………about change
Study
……………to find
……………the difference.

……………

The image
of Bain Town/Grassroots
which sat boisterously
drinking
in a hundred bars names Briteley’s
or eating boiled grouper
served by
(perhaps) the last, fierce
big-bubbied Nango woman
has climbed the hill
and descended
and seeped under the door
like the smell of boiling guava
into the Houses of Parliament
where boiled crab and dough
is now served
……………under glass.
It looks the same
two years after
the fireworks
it looks
……………smells
…………………….tastes
like boiled fish and grits at Kentucky Springs
like boiled crab and dough
at sunset
in Stanyard Creek
like okra soup
by the dock
in Rock Sound
it looks/smells/tastes the same
but changing

……………

Two years of bleeding
Two years of searching the horizon
for friends
Two years of
more
……………open palms under the table
more
……………empty pockets on the streets
more
……………advice from the United Nations
more
……………dreams and schemes
……………to become reality or fail
more
……………chances to break away
……………and leave
……………or stay
more
……………efforts by the knowers to be do-ers
more
……………knowledge of the ignorance
……………and the meaning
……………of poverty
more
……………pride in being
……………whatever it is we are.

Birthdays
are meaningless
except to measure the process
of maturing.
Two years old
and growing.

Patrick Rahming

Village

webmaster — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 04:02:52 +0000

The village that the minivan was travelling to was vanishing
as we drove. Somewhere in ourselves we knew that.
It might have even been the reason finally for the driver speeding.
.
Along the way, roadwork gangs worked in the punishing
heat and dust and noise and smell of progress toward what-
ever it was that progress was supposed to be leading
.
us toward—not the village, which, as it grew larger, was diminishing.
The dust! It was phantasmagorical, how it could suddenly blot
bits of the landscape out, trees wavering briefly and receding
.
into a grey haze of vehicles-men-vegetation merged in an undistinguishing
slow-motion flurry. As we drove into it, we drew the windows shut
as though the dust and haze were all outside us. The driver revved, exceeding—
.
if there was one—our limit. And as we hurried through that spirit-famishing
landscape, i was wondering: What drove him? Drove us? And what
precisely in the village, beyond our normal businesses, were we really needing?
.
Because we did not find it. Whatever drove us was also banishing
what we were driven to. When we arrived, in truth, the village was not
there. Perhaps the arterial road we’d followed was misleading.
.
The village that the minivan was travelling to was vanishing
as we drove to somewhere in our selves. We knew. And that
might have been why we drove there with a sense of desperation, pleading.

•••

Kendel Hippolyte, a playwright, actor, director and cultural activist, received a James Michener Fellowship to study poetry, an OAS scholarship to study theatre, twice won the Literature prize in St. Lucia’s Minvielle & Chastanet Fine Arts Awards, and was given the St. Lucia Medal of Merit (Gold) in 2000.

Kendel Hippolyte

Havana I

webmaster — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 04:02:43 +0000

Lord bless where Cuba and I meet
like river and sea
I pray we merge deep
.
.
ii.

bright red tomatoes
full of sunshine
to swallow like wine
.
.
iii.

unable to burn down, burn up
all you’d imagined you could in Cuba

Castro biting out big chunks
each turn you make
each step you take
.
.
iv.

outside Cuba, in Habana Libre,
where to go, how to get inside Cuba

where I might stretch my pocket
half full of US dollars

have to be able to stretch
what I’ve got

like goat skin for a drum

.
•••

Excerpted by permission of the author from Hymns to Him: A Poem of Cuba

•••

Obediah Michael Smith has published twelve books of poems, a short novel and a cassette recording of his poems. He has published widely in journals, and his work has begun to be translated into Spanish and included in anthologies and journals in South America, Mexico and Spain.

Obediah Michael Smith

Aileen’s Cupboard

webmaster — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:02:48 +0000

Bulldozers on every corner establish the business
of destruction, but the port crams with grandmothers
and parcels wrapped and tied with spectacular ribbons,
.
so Aileen imagines from exile. She rebuilds streets
in her cupboard where any hint of light is a highlight:
memories of ice-cream dripping from cone to slip-on,
.
summer afternoons of crab football and skipping.
Aileen counts hairs on her head to pass time, working
her way from root to root, as God does universally
.
with bewildering compassion. Her cupboard has space
enough to stretch out and sleep. In others, children stand
like horses or hang upside-down like bats from hangers.
.
She believes grandmothers will arrive with gifts
and there will be a new heaven and a new earth.
Children will walk to school again, fearing neither
.
the drip of concrete and glass from permanent cloud
nor sudden immolation from journalists wielding
blowtorches as they once wielded typewriters.
.
Grim landowners will abandon viral promotion
of plastic crabgrass; their scorched earth policy
will yield only irises of sweet-smelling smoke.
.
Aileen never knows whether she is awake or asleep.
An ocean of people – swimmers? drowners? –
bob in her thoughts. It is too dark to identify
.
faces or know whether a state of thought is home
enough for them. Water knocks against the pier –
from these double doors, countless waves away.

•••

catch a fire prompts for June 2009: grandmother, crabgrass, exile, root, ocean

•••

Rob A. Mackenzie lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. A pamphlet, The Clown of Natural Sorrow, was published by HappenStance Press in 2005. His first full collection, The Opposite of Cabbage, was published by Salt in March 2009. He blogs at Surroundings.

Rob A. Mackenzie

Conception of Anne Bonny

webmaster — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:01:32 +0000

In one version,
Anne’s father impregnates
the housekeeper.
His wife takes her to court,
exiles her to the colonies.
Anne’s father follows
by choice.
.
Displacement: swearing
the color of the water
changes. New voices
murmur from the sea.
The skin adopts
new salt and water languages
and the skin speaks them, softens.
.
Of course it is easy
for the man to recover
his social stature
when displaced
to the colonies.
.
In Carolina all you need
is money, a plantation,
a clapboard house
with a porch, and a good family.
.
Displacement: the color
of the world changes.
Why bother with light?
The pitch of the home
defined by the lack
of his shirts hanging
on chair backs.
.
Says the dusty table: Do not
set places for three:
there was never anything
worth your womb.
.
The bed: Your existence
will never again be defined
by the body sleeping
next to you.
.
Did you think
this was a closet?
the sink asks the
sleepwalker.
.
The sleepwalker stares
at the sink:
My dreams promised me
an ocean.

•••

Sonia Farmer is a Bahamian who completed her BFA in Creative Writing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, in May 2009. She is the author of two limited edition chapbooks, What Becomes Us and Grow. Her work has appeared in Ubiquitous Literary and Art Magazine, Poui X, and tongues of the ocean.

Sonia Farmer