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
