I’ve now become an unwilling seer

If I were to follow the only star on earth

If it could be done, would you want

Imagine if you could have either cherry or stove,

Imagine it is only light

Imagine that September night when the news flashed

In a space where beings are transparencies of color

In Grenada for the first time, my woman

In las montañas de Sorte,

In my belly grows a tree.

In Puerto Rico, after

In Puerto Rico’s most famous painting,

in some stories you have no choice

In this cold country

In Yabocoa,

is not that she must leave her home

It could have been how Sister Barclay swung

It must always be done

It is hard staring stench in the face

106

5

4

93

83

35

6

49

65

85

66

59

89

113

65

91

34

140

108

kadak doong doong

119

Lemons relinquish their scent

Like a gem fallen from the night sky,

Look, with that scaffold up my back,

84

17

71

May you live long, long,

Mother of God! Your child

10

8

My father played music. He played a guitar and sang. My father 88 My father thought he was the devil 81 My mother took it. Aaron standing with me 150

Nights, my father’s voice trawls

Not even a chewed bone,

82

41

Our friends go like leaves of a season.

People enter my home and say,

Readying herself for what’s to come, she turns

– ‘Return to your home: in your childhood, in your heart.

She says she’s going to give up sex for Lent,

She was not begging for forgiveness when she knelt

13

115

32

14

112

33

154

New Caribbean Poetry