tongues of the ocean

tongues of the ocean update December 2012

webmaster — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:54:03 +0000

Welcome, and greetings.

Loyal readers of tongues of the ocean will no doubt be wondering what has gone wrong—where’s the October issue gone, and what’s happening with the journal.

Well, things are changing. For the past four years—since toto‘s inception in February 2009—I’ve been managing the journal more or less single-handedly. For a while I had the welcome assistance of our spoken word editor, Nadine Thomas-Brown, and also of our prose editor, Sonia Farmer, but everyone, all of us, are busy with other things. The past year has been difficult, and toto 12, October’s issue, didn’t happen.

So we’re going to go on hiatus while we retool and rejuvenate. The journal isn’t going under, so please continue to think of us as a potential place of publication, especially if you’re a Bahamian or a Caribbean writer or one from the diaspora. But for the moment we won’t be publishing any new work until we know what format we are going to continue in. A quick headsup—I’m looking for guest editors, and so if you’re interested in coming on board to edit a month or a whole issue of toto, feel free to contact me.

In the meantime, June’s issue will be consolidated and uploaded.

All the compliments of the season to you, and check back every now and then to see what we’ve got going!

Nicolette Bethel

Issue 11′s WomanSpeak feature closes

webmaster — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 04:01:05 +0000

WomanSpeak, A Journal of Literature and Art by Caribbean Women, vol. 6/2012, is now available for purchase at Lulu.com. The new anthology from WomanSpeak Books, Nassau, The Bahamas, brings together 24 writers, poets and painters in a full colour volume edited by Lynn Sweeting, designed by Julia Ames and featuring cover art by Chantal Bethel and Ashley Knowles. Volume six is especially themed, Women Speaking for The Earth. In this collection writers are not just writing about nature but are giving voice to Mother Earth herself. They also address the environmental emergencies they face as Earthling women in the Caribbean, including the pollution of the ocean, the vanishing coastlines, deforestation, as well as the responsibilities we bear in it all. As always WomanSpeak volume six/2012 is dedicated to providing a forum for women writers with diverse points of view, who break silences that need to be broken, who discuss taboo subjects, who challenge oppression by telling the truth about Caribbean women’s lives. Rape, homophobia, religious oppression and intolerance, sexuality, grief and loss are among the forbidden subjects they are bravely writing about. New works by noted writers like Lelawattee Manoo Rahming, Marion Bethel, Nicolette Bethel, and Patricia Glinton Meicholas of The Bahamas and Joanne Hillhouse of Antigua are included in this collection, as well as the work of emerging writers like Sonia Farmer and Angelique Nixon of the Bahamas, Vashti Bowlah, Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné and Simone Leid of Trinidad and Tobago. There are new voices too, including poet Anita L. MacDonald and fiction writer Keisha Lynne Ellis, and new artists like Carla Campbell and Ashley Knowles in the collection. Beautiful full colour art by established and new painters make the new WomanSpeak a literary journal unlike any other, an essential book not only for writers but for painters too and for all who love art by conscious Caribbean women. WomanSpeak was founded in 1991 by Lynn Sweeting, Helen Klonaris and Dionne Benjamin Smith to provide a forum for Bahamian and Caribbean women’s creative work, to nurture that creativity by publishing fine literature and art by women, to discover and publish emerging and developing writers, to preserve publications for future audiences and to create a space where community and sisterhood among writers and artists of the Caribbean can be cultivated and encouraged. Please get your copy today, and thank you for supporting women writers and artists of the Caribbean!

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The Mirror Sea

webmaster — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 04:02:47 +0000

The mirror sea that imitates our insides,
sprays and froths, canine, rabies-shaken.

In the cathedrals, churches, and temples,
people pray, “Oh give us glass calm, glass calm
and cool heads layered over with freshwater,”
because the mirror sea does more than reflect—

The mirror sea enacts, and these are rabid days
when men and women get themselves bitten

to death for less than cutting their eyes
in the wrong direction. The mirror sea
strengthens its undertow. Plenty dumb kids
get hit with pebbles when it sucks them in deeper

than they’d intended, into the shrapnel
it strafes at the beach with long-shore drift.

If the earth then takes them kids, people rally
on Front Street, demand their leaders push back the sea—
so the mirror sea rallies and wets Front Street,
pushes the people, leaders and all, inside.

•••

Chris Astwood is a Bermudian poet, currently working towards his PhD in Critical and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. His poetry has been published in online and print journals including Iota, Other Poetry, and The Caribbean Writer.

Chris Astwood

Near a Municipal Colony

webmaster — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 04:01:22 +0000

The buildings seem to cough. The river is a single
black lung. Shirtless men haul slabs of ice—

I’m not sure if they are for the melon vendors
down the road or for the bodies in the mortuary.

A leper hand walks to the fruit stall. A distant
gunshot scatters all the birds; the crows

are the first to return, they reoccupy their spots
on telephone wires as if to memorize the madness.

Youth lean against a wall, eve-tease with impunity.
A crowd gathers to watch a lemon spill blood.

•••

Arjun Rajendran has poems upcoming at SOFTBLOW and Nether Magazine; previously published in various international publications including QLRS and Pyrta.

Arjun Rajendran

Nellie

webmaster — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 04:02:32 +0000

They tell me you were always stubborn,
always impatient, efficient as a hammer
and as hard. When the sister whose bed you shared
forgot, in her daydream, to straighten it,
you made your side, smoothing and pulling
the sheets from the middle. You left hers alone.

It wasn’t you your father cut down
with lead words like ballast
yellow fool, yellow fool. It wasn’t you
men took for granted; they wouldn’t dare.
Still. They tell me the hardness was a shell,
was a shell; said you hit hard, aimed to kill
before you could be touched. Said the animals

knew: the pigeons flew to you, roosted
crooning on your shoulders, and the rabbits
hopped to you, dogs rolled at your feet,
and cats purred in your presence. Said
if you’d been white and a man your thread
would sew wounds, not whitemen’s trousers.

But this is how I knew you: sewing clothes
for a living, your round brown body
quick as silver for hugs, for slaps;
a harsh tongue, a soft lap, your heart tender,
as vulnerable as a lamb, and your temper
fast as fire, twice as hot, till the stroke
robbed you of speech and of memory,
laid you in a cradle, tied your hands, etched
your frown still deeper on your brow, sent you
wandering through twilight searching for your sisters,
seeking to answer when they called.

•••

Nicolette Bethel is a Bahamian playwright, poet and anthropologist who served as the Director of Cultural Affairs for The Bahamas Government. Her work has been published in a variety of print and online publications, including the Caribbean Writer, the Caribbean Review of Books, sx Salon, Poui, WomanSpeak and Yinna, the Journal of The Bahamas Association for Cultural Studies. She is the editor of the online literary journal, tongues of the ocean.

Nicolette Bethel

Requiem for Haiti

webmaster — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 04:01:08 +0000

“Requiem for Haiti 2010″ by Chantal Bethel

•••

Chantal Bethel is an artist born in Haiti, educated in Belgium, who now calls The Bahamas her home. A prolific painter and sculptor, Bethel explores the complexities and subtleties of human emotions, and celebrates women, especially the Caribbean woman. Bethel has presented her work at many group shows in The Bahamas and America. Her paintings have appeared on the covers of books by Bahamian writers Marion Bethel and Sonia Farmer. In 2010 three of her paintings were included in Jane Dowell’s book of African American Art, “A Time, A Season: A Visual Tribute to Oprah Winfrey.” Bethel is co-founder of the Grand Bahama Heritage Foundation.

Chantal Bethel

Miss Annie

webmaster — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 04:02:40 +0000

If you go west from the schoolhouse in Port Howe, past the society hall, past St. Peter’s and a little beyond Zion, you’ll come to a neat white house, nearly hidden from the road by masses of brightly coloured Crotons, Bougainvilleas and Allamandas. The property once belonged to a certain Mr. Andrew. This loving husband had made the garden for his wife Annie, who loved the beauties of Nature, perhaps because she herself was one of them.

Mr. Andrew was more than a little jealous of his silent and marvellous Annie. He made her promise that she would never marry again, if he should be the first of the pair to die. Secretly he even trained his dog to chase away other men. According to Miss Rosalie and her sister Franceta, who knew more stories than anyone else in that place, the man did genuinely love his wife and promised to look after her always. It was a promise that was never broken.

Several years later, just as he had feared, the man died, leaving behind his still attractive wife. Without children, parents or sisters and brothers, Annie found herself quite alone in the World. But not for long. As anyone of sense could have predicted, a beautiful widow with a house and land and no children was too neat a package to ignore.

A great many men rushed to woo her even before the wild grass could cover the spot where her husband lay. As many as attempted to capture this great prize were driven away by the faithful dog or had their spirits dampened by Annie’s quiet determination to remain a widow.

The harried suitors soon tired of this game and turned their attention elsewhere. All but one. This fine fellow decided upon a most unsporting course of action: he killed the dog one moonless night. Making certain that no rumour of the callous deed would reach Annie’s sensitive ear, he thrust the body into a sack and threw it into a Blue Hole. After all, the waters of those bottomless pits flow straight into the ocean, which seldom gives up the secrets entrusted to it.

Next evening, hair slicked down with lard, that determined bachelor appeared at Annie’s door. He called out in his sweetest tones:

……….“Miss Annie, O, Miss Annie, O,
……….Open the door, Miss Annie, O.”

From the corner of the porch where the dog had once kept watch came this mournful reply:

……….“O, no! O, no!
……….Since my old master died
……….Nobody dares to come in.”

When he heard these words, the rogue of a suitor realized that not even death had had the power to remove the faithful creature from his ghostly visitation, as he was certain that the dead have no power against the living.

Undaunted by the lack of an answer from Annie that evening, the village swain continued to call every night for a week thereafter. His persistence was to be rewarded. After many days, Miss Annie gave in to his pleadings and invited him into the house at last.

He spent that evening and many others trying to win her affections, and win them he did. During his courtship, Annie was never allowed to see him for the scoundrel he truly was. As the spirit voice was never heard again, the man was sure that nothing would interfere with plans.

And it seemed that he was right. Annie agreed to marry him as soon as she came out of mourning for her late husband. Once they had “jumped the broom” as the old people say, Annie’s new husband relaxed his pose. As he would say to his cronies, “Once fish on hook, man don’ need no bait.”

Annie’s life became unbearable. Her delicate hands were soon roughened by the many mean tasks which the tyrant set for her. The poor woman was forced to bake bread every day, because her husband did not like “stale wittles.” This, of course, meant carrying great armloads of wood to fire the stone oven seven times each week.

He, who had owned a single shirt before he had inherited the first husband’s clothing, now called for a fresh one every day. Since her husband would not allow her to take the washing to the rock pools by the sea as the other women did, Annie was obliged to draw countless buckets of water from the well in the yard to keep abreast of her husband’s demands. She soon ruined her hands in the foul lye concoction that he had invented for the whitening of his shirts.

As Annie was no longer allowed to pay calls or receive them, and the husband met his friends elsewhere, it was with surprise one evening, that the couple heard a knock at the door.

“Who dat out dere,” called Annie’s new husband.

A thin voice filtered through the door:

……….“Miss Annie, O! Miss Annie, O!
……….Open the door, Miss Annie, O!”

The husband sprang up from his chair, ran to the door, flung it open, only to find an empty porch.

“Wha’ kinda business dis is?” he asked suspiciously. “Who you gat comin’ to dis place? I’ll tell yuh one t’ing, if I ketch dat son of a sea cat, I’ll pop ‘e guts an’ use ‘em for garter!” he boasted.

He was never to be as confident again. After this puzzling call, there began a persecution that was all the more frightful because it was carried out by an unseen agent.

It started quite simply one Sunday. Miss Annie’s husband was standing in the church porch exchanging pleasantries with the priest, when his braces broke. His trousers, having no further reason to defy the laws of gravity, fell in a puddle about his ankles.

Humiliated, the man hoisted up the delinquent garment, bade the priest good morning, and made his way home with as much dignity as he could muster. He cursed the unhappy Annie past the burying piece, past the society hall, past Zion Baptist and was still cursing when they reached the all-age school. In fact, he cursed all the way home. He was certain that poor housekeeping was at the root of the unpleasant episode.

The events of the afternoon gave little support to this belief. When Annie’s husband sat down to his dinner, his mood improved at the sight of his favourite dishes: steamed chicken, red peas and rice, fried plantains, roast potatoes, coconut tart and limeade. Of course, it never occurred to the bounder to thank his wife for the meal.

“Can’ gi’e dese woman-dem no ideas. Dey always get beside dey se’f when yuh too nice,” he mumbled to himself.

That was just as well, for he was to get little satisfaction from that food. He picked up a wing of chicken and was ready to savour it, when it was slapped rudely from his hand. The pitcher of limeade lifted itself daintily from the table, and emptied its contents over the head of the hapless diner. The potatoes, still hot from the fire, rose from their dish and went to nestle in the husband’s pockets, much to that gentleman’s discomfort. Thick slices of plantain slapped the man’s cheeks sharply, as if they were punishing him for daring to try to eat them. The peas and rice and the tart kept their places in the natural order of things, and very decently remained inanimate.

The husband was furious and frightened all at once. Furious because he had no reason to blame Annie and frightened because he had no satisfactory explanation for his misfortunes. Though he could not lay his troubles at his wife’s doorstep, he could certainly vent his ill feeling upon her.

He got up from the table and rushed into the kitchen to find his wife, who usually ate her meals there to escape her husband’s evil temper. He was about the slap the quaking Annie when he was hoisted by his braces and flung through a window, Once outside, the man’s troubles began in earnest. His leg was gripped and he was punched repeatedly, but he saw no hands. As many kicks as he received, he hat yet to gaze upon the attacking foot.

For a week, the husband’s days followed the same dreadful pattern with three exceptions: The events of the dining table could not be repeated, as he had lost his appetite after the third occasion. Secondly, the frightened man got no sleep after the third night. On the fourth night, he began to hear the rattle of a horse and carriage being driven at a furious pace over the stony roadway. The clatter drew ever nearer without actually arriving.

The strangest thing of all, perhaps, was the change which took place in Annie. She no longer quaked in her husband’s presence, but smiled constantly. Her secret smile only served to irritate her husband further. She seemed to know something that he did not.

The seventh day of this unhappy week was, unexpectedly, a day of rest. It was as if the unknown enemy had declared a truce. The man rose, as usual, to the clang of the fire irons as his wife cleared the kitchen hearth to lay a new fire of pigeon plum sticks and stopper wood. He dressed gingerly with every expectation of being harassed. To his surprise, his buttons remained buttoned, his braces continued to brace and his suspenders very properly suspended, as they ought.

Thus encouraged, Annie’s husband took a seat on the porch, lit his pipe and still nothing happened. As he was not a man to ask the price of fish that had been given to him, he decided to relax and enjoy the respite.

He, to whom nature had once been a mass of green, saw it that morning in all its glorious colours. He noticed that the gold of the chalice flowers cascading over the fence was less bright than that of the Allamanda blooms. He marveled that the hummingbird could hover above a flower, seemingly motionless, to probe its heart. The piercing metallic whine of the cicadas in the bushes now soothed, where once it annoyed.

When, at noon, Annie’s husband noticed that all was still well with him, he ordered a hearty lunch made up of all his favourite dishes, much like a condemned man. As he was able to enjoy this meal and the next, his temper improved to such an extent, that he even addressed a few kindly remarks to Annie.

At lunch, he said: “Where you get dese snapper, Annie? Dese so fresh, dey tas’ like dey jump straight from de sea into de pot. You outdo yuhse’f wit’ dis potato bread, gal.”

His remarks at dinner were similar: “Mr. Rispah kill hog, ey? Dis pork tas’ corn fed; only Rispah does gi’e his hog crack corn.”

After this second lengthy speech, Annie ran outside to check the weather, the coming of a storm sometimes caused people to act strangely. This could be the only reason for her husband’s friendliness. As the sun had gone down red, however, Annie found no answer in the skies.

The source of Annie’s puzzlement moved from the dinner table to his favourite chair on the porch, thinking to end that perfect day with a long quiet smoke before bedtime. In a perfect world, he would have enjoyed his pipe. With his first puff, came the sound of a distant rattle which grew louder and louder. It was almost certainly the rattle of a horse-drawn carriage driven at a furious pace down a stony road.

In his mind, Annie’s husband could see the sparks fly as the horses’ shoes struck flint rocks. Sharpened by fear, his imagination drew him a picture of the carriage rocking from side to side, the foam frothing from the speeding horses’ lips and the sweat glistening on their heaving sides.

The reality was far more horrible than all his imaginings. Out of the night rushed a huge carriage that was blacker than the heart of a hurricane and certainly more terrifying. The horses, which drew it, were as white as the foam on a moonlit ocean with eyes flashing red sparks. They stopped at the gate, pawing at the ground, rearing into the air, gnashing their great teeth and straining at the traces.

Though the husband had lost the power to speak at the sound of the first rattle, he found it again when he saw that the carriage was driverless. He at once began to squeal like a pig having its tail docked. Then adding pitch to black, white to chalk, nightmare to horror, the doors of the carriage flew open. Unseen hands pushed the husband, now witless with fear, into the ghastly vehicle. As soon as the doors were shut again, the horses once more took up their maddened pace.

No one knows for certain what happened during this unearthly ride. The old people say that Annie’s husband stumbled back into the settlement at dawn the next day, much changed in manner and appearance. He who was once bold had become meek, and his night-black hair had grown as white as cotton bolls. Thereafter, as long as he lived, he was a kind, considerate husband to Annie. If no one else knew the source of Annie’s good fortune, Annie certainly did.

•••

“Miss Annie” was originally published in An Evening in Guanima: A Treasury of Folktales from The Bahamas by Patricia Glinton (Guanima, 1993), and reprinted in WomanSpeak 5 in 2010.

•••

Patricia Glinton Meicholas is a writer from The Bahamas best known for authoring An Evening in Guanima, a collection of Bahamian folktales, published by Guanima Press. She published two volumes of poetry, Robin’s Song and No Vacancy in Paradise. Her writings on Bahamian art and culture have been included in the Encuentros series of the Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center and in the MacMillan Dictionary of Art. Her folktale, “The Gaulin Wife” appears in the Penguin anthology, Under the Storyteller’s Spell. As Senior Vice President of The Counsellors Ltd., she wrote and directed numerous historical film documentaries made for television. In 1992 she co-wrote the book, Bahamian Art, 1492-1992, a definitive study of five hundred years of art from The Bahamas. In 1997 she co-founded The Bahamas Association for Cultural Studies and in 2000 founded the association’s literary journal, Yinna, and has served as editor for four volumes of literature and scholarly work.

Patricia Glinton-Meicholas

Ole Higue

webmaster — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 04:01:39 +0000

“Ole Higue” by Ashley Knowles

•••

Ashley Knowles is a Bahamian artist with a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Smith College in Anthropology with a concentration degree in Museum Studies. She completed an internship at the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folk Life and Cultural Heritage. She completed a certificate programme in Art Museum Studies at the Summer Institute of Art Museum Studies (SIAMS). WomanSpeak is pleased to be the first literary jourmal to publish her paintings.

Ashley Knowles

Seized

webmaster — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 04:02:25 +0000

Harsh cannon booms and pounding thuds:
The waves make war upon the shore
awash in foam-blood evermore,
defying fools to mortal combat
with the sea who neither knows
nor cares for flotsam such as we.

Bit-players on the stage of life,
frustrated plots, eroding strife,
we seek out fame and seek out glory.
Yet the sea’s life’s allegory,
and the imperious elements
make mockery of us all.

The sea explodes in thunderous cracks
of ancient ire, primordial rage.
We are compelled to turn the page,
and now the sea holds center stage.
It slaps the smooth and gallant shore-face:
“You are nothing next to me!”

“Rogue wave!” they said as if explaining
made it better, made it right
that now the darkness quenched the light
and blindness washed away all sight.
“Rogue wave!” they said. “Rogue wave!” Rogue wave
was to my child an early grave.

A dagger plunged into my throat;
the acid tears both burned and choked.
I could not speak, I could not breathe;
maternal bosom could not heave.
My soul poured out upon the floor

•••

Anita MacDonald is a retired businesswoman originally from Ridgefield, Connecticut, now a freelance writer who has published articles in the Nassau Guardian and the Tribune. She is a member of the Nassau Music Society and plays First French Horn with The Bahamas National Symphony Orchestra and sings in various choirs including Alliance Francaise and the St Paul’s Cathedral choir. WomanSpeak is proud to be the first journal to publish her poems.

Anita MacDonald

Etiquette for Fine Young Cannibals

webmaster — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 04:01:20 +0000

A woman walks into a bar and says
What’s for dinner?
The bartender says
Ma’am, we don’t sell food here
She kicks off her high heels and sits on a stool
What about that bowl of cherries? You
think I’m a fool?
The bartender says
Those aren’t cherries, they’re women we’ve raped
The woman says
You think I’m a fool? I know the difference
between food and rape
Rape is bloody, is hung up in display cases
at the front of restaurants
People walk by and pick out the one
that looks overdone
have the waiters take it to the kitchen
chop it up and serve it with a side of white rice
Ma’am, says the bartender, this is an elite
establishment
we don’t deal in dead. All our rapes are 100% guilt free
tiny bite-size murders
dressed in machismo and
apathy
buried
left to ferment
in a bed of self-doubt
and silence.

•••

Simone Leid is a poet from Trinidad and Tobago, a Fellow of the Cropper Foundation Creative Writers Workshop and founder of The WomenSpeak Project, an online forum which encourages Caribbean women to tell their stories of surviving violence and discrimination.

Simone Leid