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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As I wash my feet in the ocean
the hills dry them with her shadow
perhaps the same one you cast
on my affections
right before I venture to put this love to bed

re-reading childhood storybooks
re-educating my desires
and didn’t sleeping beauty sleep for 100 years
before her prince arrived
5 years and counting
still stifled by loneliness
masking one night sweat-sheets
in remembrance of love
although there is nothing loving
about a stranger’s embrace
after an hour passes
no matter how much
I close my eyes and pretend

and when intimacy does call
in the form of a loving touch
a loving embrace
our governments wage wars
over flying fish boundary-lines
and your lover wages war
over this deepness we share
even though our lips have never tasted
each other’s kiss

miles away across the ocean
in this double mountain land
I remember the flatness of your horizon
no hills for sunsets to hide
nor sunrises to peep from
and I think of you
how loving you might feel
then I see the shadows made
by almond trees in this sand

and I am distracted by the thought of her lips
that still smiles in this rude and seductive
patios tongue

but I return to your eyes
wrapped around my heart
but you have a lover
too insecure to realize what she has
but a lover nonetheless
to warm your bed
while my journey will end
as it began
alone
with fragments of love
alive only in my head.

Paula Obè is a poet from Trinidad & Tobago. She is a performance poet who has been performing for the past 15 years. She combines music and words to create a sound all her own. She has performed twice at The Women’s Voices Festival, Ottawa, and at events in Barbados, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Guyana and in her home country, Trinidad & Tobago and New York. Paula has had poems published in journals and magazines such as Fireweed – Canada, Community of Poets and Pulsar – England, plus anthologies in the USA, Venezuela, and T&T. In 1999, her first book of poems, entitled Passages was published by The New Voices of T&T. In 2001, her second book Walking a Thin Line was published by Ride the Wind Publishers in Vancouver, Canada. She has also produced two poetry cds, “Afterbirth” and “Not so Soft”. In 2000, together with poet Annessa Baksh, she formed Fishink Press, producers of the 10 Sisters Show. An annual show of some of the best female poets and singer-songwriters in T&T.

Samuel Sharpe preached of equality
in men and his words lifted up slaves
judges considered chattel property.
He said “let us strike!” and the moral waves
swept across Jamaica. Freedom was rebel

music played at the Baptist deacon’s raves.
A peaceful protest began, and when work’s bell
rang, none went to sugar fields to dig graves
for future seeds of Africa to dwell
in pregnant labor for an elite’s sadistic

plan. The plantocracy profited jolly well
from wielding whips and cane sticks that could pick
backs bloody. Tongues were cut out but scars tell
of the generations of pain in graphic
detail. British newspapers spoke of a ban

on servitude, but the text did not stick
to polished mansion floors of Jamaican
plantation owners. The military with a click
of each musket put bullets in man, woman
and the strike. Some angry servants continued

to fight; estates were razed, and the heat evenly
tanned planters who watched as their fortune caves
in to the chants for equal rights. Eventually,
Samuel Sharpe emerged from hidden enclaves
and the Redcoats hung him; from a tree he fell
as an example to obey, or face barbaric

death. Hundreds were executed by the devil
hangmen until justice removed the demonic
beings. In the end, abolitionists won
(along with economics), and a new attitude
prevailed in the New World. Chains were undone,
and freed men were left to till Earth’s soil for food.

Marc Morgan was born and lives in Jamaica. He is an attorney by profession. He is also a web entrepreneur, founder of Caribbean Destination Website – Rum and Relaxation (http://www.rumandrelaxation.com) – and other internet ventures. He has always had a passion for writing. He first began writing poetry when he was 13. Most of the poetry he has written to date has been really for private consumption, but he is opening up and intends to share some of pieces with the rest of the world.

When I was eight years old
I was already astute
a smart worm
a perceptive cactus
who knew at that point
that during school recess
in order to prevent
my classmates’ jokes about my hair
my skin color
mis bembas grandes
big lips
big hips
I must get into the bathroom
to hide
or to picnic there
to write novels
to talk to my imaginary friends
there were many
legions
to laugh
to recite poems
to practice what I was taught in class
to review the math test
to fancy the teacher
and imagine she was my girlfriend
to conclude my science project
to inhale the albuterol medicine
for my asthma attacks
to cough
to practice an invisible kiss
waiting for it to happen
I learned to see my world
stuck in that bathroom
of Colegio San Vicente Ferrer
spent many years making this place my den
my cave
my hideaway

I also knew
that once sat in class
if Mrs. Guzmán mentioned the word “Africa”
while teaching Social Studies
I was supposed to wear a stoic mask
pretend it did not happen
assume an I do not care attitude
thereby obviate the long awaited reaction
of José Manuel or Eliseo
or anyone else who joined in the harassment
there was always the cry proclaiming funny
Yolanda, you are African!
you are so black
so ugly black
so bembetrueno
big lips thunder
big hip hurricane
while the teacher tried to scold the commotion
(silent children
show respect for others
remember that God punishes without rod and no whip)
to implement bullying policies
that have not yet been invented
in 1978

Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro (1970, Puerto Rico) is the author of Caparazones (2010), the first lesbian fiction novel written in Puerto Rico, published by Editorial Egales in Spain.  She won the National Institute of Puerto Rican Literature Prize in 2008, the Woman Latino Writer Award Residency from The National Hispanic Culture Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2011 and the PEN Club Prize on 2010 and 2006. Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro is the Director of Puerto Rican writers participating in the Second Puerto Rican Word Festival in Old San Juan and New York on 2011.

This is what it’s not about.
This is not about the way
you trudge out of bed at ungodly hours
life-infused Frankenstein, too tall;
arms and legs like Tolkien’s Ents,
lumbering to the bathroom where you always remember
to put the seat back down. This is not about
how you said you could wine (but didn’t)
and you learnt about J’ouvert, third-eye aflutter
so you saw beneath my paint and mud.

This is not about
how you said you weren’t a smoker, but really
really you are one–
and when you told me how your mother died
lips tasting like cheap cigars and ‘dro–
how when you curled your mouth
around the sadness, I felt sad too
but I didn’t want you to think I was pitying you.

This is not about
your head beneath my fingertips
pecan skin
or your big-big feet
or your big-big hands
how they wrap around my own
your body enveloping mine,
all fetal reabsorption-like
or a giant burrito, warm and delicious
making me feel tiny, which I almost never do these days.

This is not about
how I wouldn’t mind if you loved me
if you wanted to go down that road again
even for a moment
barefoot, to feel the dust and fresh
dirt between your toes. I’d carry you if I could
me, my bad back, my heart an open birth canal
oozing, thumping, waiting for a bloody head to crown.