Dollar Days

I I miss the dollar days when,  palms tattooed hexagonally, dollar and I, foot after foot, dust trailing my march:  Afternoon.  What you want? A lollipop and two sweets.  Look.  The crawl back home;  fingers fiddling through wrappers, the crimson watermelon candy hot red beneath that sack of light,  ridges

Between Islands: Independence 47

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Poetry

Bad Man

Great things happen when good people pray. Father: Please make the bad man stop hurting mommy.

Poetry

Bolonm

What’s a mother left to do when in the wrinkled chapter of life her children are bygones, memories of  tears stifled like sneezes.

Poetry

Progress in Pages

Our story began with calloused hands, wielding shovels, dreams carried on the backs of working people.

Article Featured

Opinion: Formalising the Informal and Protecting People: The Banana Farmer’s Overdue Insurance Coverage

The first official mention of an insurance scheme for banana cultivators is nestled in a government strategy report dated 1999.

Poetry Featured

To Oneself

Star child: on the shore, the winds of change wash you from a depressed slumber.

Poetry

Kong Strike

Little could be recognised after the massacre. In eyeshot and periphery, the carcasses of a

Poetry

Face Washing

You couch over this fountain of youth, soap in hand - the memory opens the tap -

Poetry

An Afternoon's Downpour

Rags canvassing the obscured windshield- Oh, how futile the effort.

Article Featured

The Koudmen Model for Cultural Preservation

Sadly, the current western economic model does not provide for cultural preservation, only cultural exploitation.

Poetry Featured

Jété

Elected windward priests - faithful children, disillusioned -  bid their congregants pray. - J. T. Tench

Poetry

Orphan-Maker

Ask the Orphan-Maker for mercy when bullet, from source to skull, claims its tax -

Essay

Myths vs Reality: A Library Story

I flip through the crisp pages of Walcott’s “White Egrets” as I sit in a library and I’m forced to ponder my childhood. I was raised with the very scent of books and I remember fondly the hardcovers, which I believe could have withstood the test of time

The Crucible

Let me tell you I had to fight a war for us. If you were there to witness your eyes would roll back in your skull so you could watch your mind implode. Your very soul would simmer to a soundless boil because of what she did: her sin against

A Looshan Sunset

An orange sun dances in the sky  like Eden’s sly serpent  and your bulging ape-eyes  are glued to your lover  like a dog drooling for low-hanging meat. The waves - shh - hush the West Coast. On your bare knees, Saint Lucia possesses you.  You caress Lover’s body,

Peace

Feel sand between your toes, sit, wait; Peace is coming. You are the shore the waves are here to cleanse - they erode worried shackles, deposit stones  and shells - scattered pieces of new hope. Assort them: Carve your reflection into the sand with them - forget sandcastles, that’s

Absolution

You follow ripe bougainvillaea trellis down thorny paths; they cut first your conscience, then your flesh: this is absolution. A black woman, rocking herself between life and death. After a sigh revealing cheeks caving into cheekbones, she holds you: join her in song, learn the song you and  your upright

Featured

Eleven

I doe know what the girl do the man for him to punish her so badly so. I doe know if she was on the edge  with him between heaven and hell - and she shoved him over, took his soul and rinsed it in the brimstone fire.  I doe

Koudmen

It’s hardly dawn and you forget the English at home. Blue jeans, white shirt, an expectant stomach, you leave: today is koudmen. The day opens with cocoa tea and  rock-hard bakes. The men regale each other with stories of cock-fights, snakes from Anse La Raye, brushes with death  and

New Wave, The Glory of Becoming

Gallery

Yard Fowls

Not long after church bells sound and  cynical mothers scurry to morning Mass, the yard fowls come out of hiding. Motors are a ghetto’s rooster -  my suburban brother doesn’t know the cries of truant church-boys, homeschooled surgeons operating on the organs of makeshift cars. Neither does he

The Flower Garden

I - Before the fall Midday on a Friday is loud and  the park seems to lose its serenity. The scent of dried urine betrays a man's dominance.  Somewhere, pigeons colonise a marble seat, spreading their culture of strewn, wet faeces. I search for another seat.  Flowers: zinnias,

The East Coast, Reviewed

I You leave the North and Saint Lucia tries to kill you. The Barre de l’Isle is church, the bamboos are priests; they rub together and hum hosannas. The cliffs are strategic  and death is certain, but you are chosen. You drive through the lacerations and soon come upon

Christmas

When pigs and cows become counterfeit roosters,  and Aunt whatever-her-name-is - it doesn’t matter - she’s sent a barrel, Christmas is here. Mum strips her house bare and  never-before-seen curtains are hoisted; Nen outs her new tablecloths: wooden castles more elaborate than a mother’s pride. Contemporary barter: