Carnival

By: Jessica Williamson

Colours united unleash on the world,
Tell stories of history new and old,
Drum beat and music sing out their sound
People jump up and dance around

Gold and glitter, green and blue,
Sparkle and purple, spirits true
Friendship, welcome, tales of strength
Flag and whistle, parade makes descent

Delicious food, world-wide delights
People singing, feeling bright
Curry and rice, chicken and chips
Children jive, girls wiggle their hips

Everyone alive, the beat drumming on
Calypso, reggae, steel-pan song
Dancing and singing into the night,
Red and black and colours white

 

Jessica Williamson is a mixed-race, Black British 28 year-old woman of Trinidadian/English nationality.

Vigie Beach

By: Femi Rene

Walking along Vigie Beach one day
Three of my best friends and I we trod
Joking and chatting along the way
Stopping ever so often to play
Till we approached where the beach grew broad

And the seagrape trees in season grew
We dumped our bags at the tangled roots
And the blackbirds in a flurry flew
We searched about for the purple hue
That ripened within the choicest fruits

Then scrambled up the twisted branches
Underneath the trees umbrageous leaves
And there we took the direst chances
Perched in most inelegant stances
Our fingers raking like talonned sieves

At the purple fruit where they coyly swayed
From pliant branches just beyond our reach
In the end we settled for sea grapes splayed
At the roots where the twigs and brown leaves laid
Then continued walking along the beach.

The Blizzard

By: Femi Rene

A snarling wolf, time hungrily devours this life.

You plod on through blank griefs searching for that magic

word, that one word to fill the blankness in your life

some shelter from the bleak blandness of this life, some

inviolable vowel beneath whose boughs to

bear life’s burdens, or some comforting consonance

muttered beneath the breath as beaded words blend between

your freezing fingers, clasped around your mouth for warmth.

And all you want to do is rest a while, to sleep perhaps

But oh! The wolf is coming, coming; there will be

no time for resting, no time for putrid penance.

The wolf is coming canis lupus through the cold

blizzard, unrelenting as he stalks, through pages of

snow leaving his scent in blots of urine and then

howling through the years oh! You must trudge onwards through

the deep dark woods; there will be time enough to sleep.

Harbor

By: Summer Edward

You sailed the open waters once
pure, sea-skinned,
wind-armed children
are born lifting horizons,
helming ships,
ruling terrible oceans.

Now from this harbor:
blue sigh of the sea,
anonymity of myth,
transport
of suffering.

Your playthings,
like anchors,
easily and readily
sink, the ocean deafens you…

…with movement;
It is your memories
backwashed against the docks
of yesteryears, now the tides
have took them.

Out at sea they wait
for you.

On Being Untame

By: Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné

She fears I’ve grown too wild
to be kept indoors

so just this once,
I let her scald the feathers
from my body, anoint me,
wrap me in gauze.

But while she sleeps
I will forage in corners
for dying things,
sprout slim bones from my spine
that will arch into wings.

Untitled

 By: Natalie Peart

I wish you would go quick from my mind
The surface of my heart scalped
and held out. Less an offering
but rather the movement of acknowledgment

that you had me when you held me.

Let us lay
splayed, side by side
on the hot earth,
the hum of sex
between us.

Let us walk
with Brooklyn at its most gentle
lapping breeze at dusk and the hallowed
light of fireflies.

I have loved you before

with the strength
that makes a moment change
instantly. I am breathing
with longing that feels centuries old.
Feels like sitting next to one another
with I know you following every word spoken.

Morning

By: Femi Rene

Arise now friends, let us some joy impart,
upon the world that paupered sits about,
transform the doleful melancholy heart,
into a place of pleasure with a shout,

and flow into the veins life giving blood,
and draw into the lungs a spirit new,
let joy pour forth as water from a flood,
and earthly languor with new mirth imbue.

Arise the sun in glory near divine,
arise above the night’s tenebrous veil,
therein where all her prisoners did pine,
and neath her cover lonesome souls did wail.

Erase the darkness from the far-flung sky,
then sweep bedraggled clouds along their way,
and chirp the day awake as blackbirds fly,
across the vast expanse of a new day.

Cast off the tattered garments of the dawn,
in which the world did through the darkness brood,
and wield the gilded vestment of the morn,
about her form then gaze upon her mood.

The aureate beauty all the world imparts,
her verdant plumage ruffled in the breeze,
and all her finery quivers as she starts,
along her journey back to slumber’s ease.