

St. Somewhere Journal

July 2013 Issue

Various Contributors

Edited by Randy Baker

Cover Art: "Dawning" by Portia Subran

Smashwords Edition

Published on Smashwords by

Pleasant View, Tennessee

U.S.A.

<http://www.stsomewherepress.com/>

ISBN: 9781301922062

St. Somewhere Journal, July 2013 Issue

Copyright 2013 by St. Somewhere Press

Individual contributors retain copyright of their respective works.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy. Thank you for respecting the rights of this publisher and the individual contributors of this work.
Table of Contents

Island Time \- - A Story by Kristine Simelda

The Haunt of Alma Negron \- - A Story by Althea Romeo-Mark

Magic Island \- - A Story by CHJ Rousseau

The Sieve of Time \- - A Poem by Afzal Moolla

Intervention \- - A Story by Cher Corbin

Red \- - A Poem by Cher Corbin

Not Me \- - A Poem by Graham Bannister

Caught \- - A Story by Carol Mitchell

The Nutsman \- - A Poem by K. Jared Hosein

Sourness \- - A Poem by K. Jared Hosein

The End \- - Art by Portia Subran

Dream Reader Art by Portia Subran

let bygones be bygones \- - A Poem by Loretta Oleck

secret shack \- - A Poem by Loretta Oleck

Saffron Life \- - A Poem by Loretta Oleck

Diana \- - A Poem by Clinton Van Inman

Sylvia \- - A Poem by Clinton Van Inman

Immeasurable \- - A Poem by Robert Gibson

Parts one and two \- - A Poem by Dawnell Harrison

200 leis \- - A Story by Jenille Prince

Dreams and Reality \- - A Story by Latoya Wakefield

Sweet Hand \- - A Story by Vashti Bowlah

Thief in the Village \- - A Story by Patricia Whittle

Walk Too Fast, Walk Two Time \- - A Poem by Patricia Whittle

Helper \- - A Poem by Patricia Whittle

Julie Mango \- - A Poem by Vanessa Simmons

Mr. Brown \- - A Poem by Vanessa Simmons

The Grand Master of Time (v1) \- - Art by Barbara Sandiford

The Grand Master of Time (v2) \- - Art by Barbara Sandiford

Sweet Slavery \- - Art by Barbara Sandiford

Rainy Season \- - A Poem by Sarah Venable

Transport of the Word \- - A Poem by Sarah Venable

Man Called Raven \- - Art by Glenn Johnson

Homes for the Inde \- - A Story by Glenn Johnson

Father's Day \- - A Story by Simon Dolcy

I Want to Go Back \- - A Poem by Tracey-Ann Wisdom

Reflection \- - A Poem by Kade Anthony Walker

Licks Carnt Dun! \- - A Poem by Andrea Olivia Ottley

Heathrow International immigration 2007 \- - A Poem by Malika Booker

Sweet Liquor \- - A Poem by Malika Booker

Death March \- - A Poem by G. Newton Chance

Contributors Notes

Submission Guidelines
**Isla** nd Time A Story by Kristine Simelda

The antiquated aircraft had been up and down at least a half a dozen times since it had rumbled into the hot, blue sky. So far none of the islands had even slightly resembled Isaiah's childhood home. This was definitely not the tropical paradise he remembered as a kid. What had happened to the puffy white clouds? A metallic gray haze floated under the shadow of the wing. Where were the towering green mountains? A monotonous parade of shrunken atolls dotted with a few scraggly coconut palms loomed below. When had the sparkling blue water turned brown? Ash from the frequent volcanic eruptions combined with global warming had submerged the coral reefs and white sand beaches into an unappetizing soup of primordial muck.

Isaiah stared out the window at the bland scenery in disbelief. It was as if the vibrant landscape of his youth had virtually disappeared. Now he understood why island hopping, once a favorite past time of the nearly-rich and semi-famous, was no longer in fashion.

"Leewards to Windwards, Windwards to Leewards" the steward complained in a singsong voice. "Boring, boring, boring."

Isaiah was inclined to agree. Lulled into a kind of geographic trance, he had been dozing for most of the flight. He was dreaming of his mother, when he was jolted awake by a sharp explosion. The turbo-prop stalled in mid-air and then made a violent u-turn. Though his seat belt was buckled, his body was whipped around like a puppet cut loose from its strings. His head smashed into the window with a mind- numbing crack, and the so-called present moment paused at a set of foggy crossroads. A Mystic directing traffic at the junction offered him four choices: to go back, to go forward, or travel left or right in time.

"Okay. Everyone listen up. We're going down," the plane's steward announced, as if making Isaiah's decision for him.

"Actually the way up and the way down are one in the same," the Mystic, who was now occupying the seat next to him, declared.

"Yeah, that's right. Up is down, and down is up." the steward agreed.

"So, where is it?" The Island, lost in a mist of time and rain, was nowhere in sight.

"Have patience," the Mystic replied.

"I can't see anything," Isaiah whined.

"The place you seek can never be found by seeking, yet only seekers find it," proclaimed the Mystic.

"I'm seeking. I mean, I'm not seeking!"

"There it is!" exclaimed the steward.

An opening the size of a pinprick appeared in the mist. Vapors began to rotate like a whirlpool. The helpless plane was sucked into a swirling vortex. Slices of mountaintops, snatches of river valleys, and copious coconut trees bombarded Isaiah's vision. Tropical scenery was spinning like a top. At the last possible moment, the aircraft leveled out and floated gracefully onto the potholed landing field, bouncing several times before stopping just short of the sea. Isaiah peered through the badly scratched window. It had been twenty years since he had been spirited away from The Island, but home is a place one seldom forgets.

Since he was the only person disembarking, the steward snatched up the metal steps the moment he set foot on the tarmac. Isaiah smoothed his clothes and checked his watch as the Eagle disappeared. A sense of panic rose from the pit of his stomach. Why had he felt so compelled to come back and search for his roots after all these years? What exactly was he hoping to find? Everything seemed so different. What if no one remembered him? He thought he heard familiar music as he strode in the direction of the old stone terminal. The closer he got, the more intense the rhythm became. When he stepped inside, old- time reggae tunes were throbbing off the walls. The guy at the immigration desk was leaning back on his stool with his eyes half closed crooning 'Don't worry about a thing'. 'Every little thing is gonna be all right', belted the customs officer, standing up on his the inspection table.

After a while the music stopped. Immigration coughed, straightened his cap, and rearranged his rubberstamps before signaling Isaiah to approach his desk. There was no sign of a computer screen anywhere, no scanner to read the global ID chip implanted in his palm. Isaiah fumbled nervously for his passport.

The officer finally spoke to him. "Relax, man. Where did you come from?"

"Actually, I was born here."

"Great! What's your name?"

"Isaiah Lamonde."

"Don't tell me you're Rosay's son. Remember me? I'm Spanny! We used to play together when we were kids!"

Isaiah didn't remember anyone named Spanny.

"What about maman-ou?" Spanny inquired in Creole.

"She died overseas."

"Élas. I'm sorry to hear that. Hey, Wallace! This is Rosay's son. Let him use the jeep, okay?"

Unlike the nightmare Isaiah usually suffered when traveling internationally, this was like a strange but pleasant dream.

The scenic drive from the airport was like a journey back through geological and emotional time. As the bare bones jeep lurched out of the lot and turned up the coastal road, Isaiah sensed he was entering a world more linked to the past than to the present. There was no traffic. The tall palms that lined the roadside were healthy and alive. The few settlements he passed along the coast looked exactly the way he remembered them from his childhood. Music blared in obscure rum shops, and drunken old men slammed worn dominos on wooden tables with such force that it was a wonder the legs didn't collapse. Women of all ages sat in groups gossiping and scrubbing laundry in bright plastic tubs, while half naked little boys ran behind Isaiah's transport, penises dangling.

At the turn off for the gateway to the interior, he pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head. He had not come back to The Island to hang out by the coast. He was headed to the interior where the rivers ran cool and clear. As Isaiah cruised up through the margins of the shady gorges of the valley, he felt absorbed by The Island's increasingly lush terrain. Welcome home, the towering trees seemed to say. The higher he went, the better he felt. The clear mountain air was working on him like an elixir. By the time he shifted the transport into low gear and started to scale the steep, narrow road that wound into the heart of The Island, he had already begun to melt back into the green, uncomplicated world of his youth.

Isaiah pulled over at a bend in the road. Humid, oxygen-laden air engulfed him as he stepped out of the transport. Planting his feet carefully on the edge of the precipice, he stared out over his homeland, slightly bewildered. Living abroad had never been real for him, but from the moment the plane had been sucked into the vortex, he had had a sense of entering a world that was equally unreal.

They say you can never reclaim paradise. Yet as Isaiah turned off the main road onto the cobbled track that led towards his childhood home, the scene appeared unchanged. Masses of colorful flowers sprang away from the overgrown driveway as he approached the vine-covered house. A squadron of noisy Jacko parrots flew up from the old grapefruit trees on which they were feeding, and the elusive Mountain Whistler caroled from the heights. Physically the place looked the same, but where were his people; the farmers and the Rastas, uncles and aunties who cultivated the fertile ridges and ravines of The Island?

Isaiah swept out a corner of the veranda and pulled a string hammock out of his bag. The hooks attached to the posts were old and rusted, but they held fast as he climbed in. He settled down to contemplate his life so far. Loss, he decided, was his Karma. He had lost his home, and shortly after wards lost his mother. In some ways, his life overseas had been easier than his childhood, but now he was back to reclaim his roots. He planned to take his time and make a positive connection between his past and his future. Then he hoped he could move on. So why, then, was he plagued with such an uneasy feeling? Isaiah was still wondering what was wrong when he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Before heading into the forest the next morning, he stuffed himself with mangoes. He wanted to spend the entire day doing things he had done as a kid. As he passed along the ridge, Isaiah stopped often, focusing his binoculars in the treetops. Birds flitted through the under story, some so near he felt could reach out and touch them. Parrots chattered in the canopy as he picked his way among the moss-covered boulders and tree ferns that dotted the path. He was looking for the waterfall and the pool he had bathed in hundreds of times before. He could hear it somewhere in the distance, but the deeper he traveled into the forest, the more confused he became. Even though he had been walking for quite a while, the sound of falling water wasn't getting any closer. A feeling of helplessness suddenly overcame him. He was slumped down on the forest floor feeling foolish and hopelessly lost when the Mystic, dressed all in white, stepped lightly from behind a stand of bamboo.

"Sometimes forgetting is a blessing," he said. "And since not even I can predict the future, the present moment is all that really matters."

Isaiah looked up and rubbed his eyes. "How did you know where to find me?"

"I had a feeling you'd be here," said the Mystic.

"I was just looking for the waterfall, to bathe, I mean," Isaiah stammered."

"Listen," whispered the stranger.

When he did, Isaiah heard gallons of water falling somewhere below him.

"How do I get there?"

"Follow your heart."

Isaiah stood up tall and continued on more confidently. A hundred foot falls roared off the top of the cliff and thundered into an emerald green pool just around the bend. The sun was shining, and a rainbow had formed around it. He stripped down to his boxers and dove in without a second thought. The cold water caused him to shout like a little boy. After splashing around for a while, he emerged from the pool thoroughly refreshed. His mind was clearer than it had been in years. He sat down on a large flat stone and dried himself wondering which path would lead him back home.

"You already know the way," the Mystic reiterated.

That night Isaiah dreamed of the volcano. His mother was peeking boldly out of the dome. Her eyes were radiant with fire, smoke rolled out of her ears, and lightning flashed from her nostrils. When tiny, rainbow colored shards of glass came streaming from her mouth and fell like candied rain, Isaiah was delighted.

"Good trick, maman," he clapped happily. "Do it again!"

But as he pushed out his tongue to taste them, his mouth began to bleed. Isaiah rubbed his tiny fists around his grimy face causing his tears to mix with ashes and pieces of glass. Now torrents of molten lava gushed from his mother's lips. Although he tried to outrun the flow, his feet were cemented mid-stride. His screams were drowned in a bowl of magma soup as the lava engulfed him.

Birds were chirping hesitantly when Isaiah awoke. As he lay in the pitch darkness waiting for daybreak, he wondered about the meaning of his dream. Obviously his mother wanted to warn him about something, but he was having a hard time imagining what it was. The Mystic would probably know the answer. Isaiah downed his cup of cacao tea and set out for the waterfall. But when he arrived, his mentor was nowhere in sight. He glanced at his watch, which still showed the same time as when he had landed at the airport.

"Sorry if I'm late," the Mystic apologized, appearing out of nowhere.

"My Mother used to say nothing happens before time," Isaiah sighed. "But it seems like my watch has stopped."

The Mystic smiled. "The sun comes up and goes down again. It gets light and then it gets dark. One day passes like the next. That's island time."

"Maybe it needs a new battery," Isaiah persisted. He laid back and stared up through the fluttering foliage of the bamboo. "Even though I was born here, sometimes this island seems like one big riddle to me," he said. "I remember a game we used to play when we were kids."

"You want to play?" asked the Mystic.

"Sure! Tim Tim."

"Bwa Chès."

"How many coconuts can you put into an empty sack?"

"Hum. Only one, because after that the sack's not empty."

"Hey! You're good! Now it's your turn."

"Tim Tim."

"Bwa Chès."

"Three big men were standing under a small umbrella, yet none of them got wet. Why?"

"Because it wasn't raining!" crowed Isaiah

"You're not so bad yourself." the Mystic roared.

"I'm glad to see you have a sense of humor," smiled Isaiah.

"Believe me, in my line of work, I need it."

Just then the image of Isaiah's mother's face came shimmering up from the gravel bed of the pool. Rays of blue and green light streaked from her eyes, and silver bubbles poured from her lips. She must have been trying to speak to him, but no matter how hard Isaiah tried to understand, her words were unintelligible. Why did she have to die so young? If only he could hear her now, maybe she would be able to help him make sense of his life. But instead maternal enlightenment, the pool began to ripple and stones started showering down from the top of the falls.

"Earthquake!" Isaiah shouted.

Isaiah tore off through the forest at full speed. As he raced along the bank of the river, the leaves on the trees were dancing a crazy jig and the ground beneath his feet was buckling. He knew he needed to get out of the ravine. But as he scrambled up the cliff, the gravel crumbled, letting loose an avalanche of rocks. One hit him squarely on the head, causing him to lose consciousness.

"Looks like your mama is trying hard to make a point," grinned the Mystic.

The air was thick with ash and the putrid smell of sulphur when Isaiah woke up. As he clawed his way back up to the house, electricity flashed through the super-charged air. The plume of smoke pouring out of the volcano changed from dirty white to bright pink as he watched from the veranda. Then a huge bolt of lightning arched high across the valley setting off a shower of phosphorescent sparks. In the shimmering light, the mountains that surrounded his childhood home were tinged with the ominous outline of crimson colored lava.

Déjà vu all over again, Isaiah thought, as he stumbled towards the jeep.

He raced down driveway and onto the main road. As he careened through the valley, sharp blasts from the volcano caused all four tires of the speeding vehicle to leave the pavement. The lush mountain landscape turned psychedelic. Sprays of brilliant lava and hot yellow gases shot high into the halo of green clouds. Broiling pyroclastic gas would overtake him within a matter of minutes.

His heart was beating wildly when he turned into the airport parking lot. The terminal was deserted. Isaiah ventured out onto the runway, threw his hands up to the sky, and prayed for a miracle. He didn't have to wait long until the same beat up turbo-prop that had deposited him on The Island sputtered through the thick cloud of ash. He took off his jacket and waved. The plane zoomed over once and then circled back around. As it dipped dangerously close to the ground, Isaiah flatted himself on the hot runway.

Isaiah squeezed his eyes shut. He could hear the hissing of molten lava as it crept steadily onto the tarmac. But next thing he knew he was on board the plane, buckled in the same seat as before. The steward was standing over him looking concerned.

"What happened?" Isaiah asked, baffled.

"You had an accident, dude. Major turbulence caused you to hit your head on the window as we passed over The Island. Since you were the only passenger scheduled to disembark, we never landed. We're just heading back up north now."

"But I was there," Isaiah insisted, pointing downward.

"That's impossible. No one got off the plane. Besides, looks like that place is history."

Glancing out the dirty window, Isaiah noted that The Island was nowhere in sight. Was his trip home simply a dream resulting from concussion, or was it real? Scratching his bandaged head, Isaiah checked his watch and was relieved to see that time was once again passing. He was getting ready to recline when he became aware of the Mystic seated beside him.

"How was your trip?" the fakir inquired.

"According to the steward, I never got off of the plane."

"Maybe not physically, but mentally you were long gone."

"I dreamed I went home," said Isaiah.

"So what did you learn while you were away?"

"Someone who looked a lot like you advised me not to worry about the past or the future, to follow my heart and live in the present moment. My mother spent a lot of energy making sure I got the message. "

"Tim Tim," the Mystic challenged.

"Bwa Chès," Isaiah retorted.

"Why is it that when you lose something, you always find it in the last place you look?"

"Because once you've found it, it isn't lost anymore," Isaiah beamed

The Island would always be alive in his memory, but from now on he was confident he could find his own way home.
The Haunt of Alma Negron A Story by Althea Romeo-Mark

Sammy awoke when a soft, slimy thing fell on his face. With a swift stroke he slapped it away not knowing what the wet thing was. A draft enveloped him. Alma forgot to shut the windows, he thought shivering on a rock-hard bed in a damp room. Feeling for the bed sheet, he discovered there was none. He sat up and opened his eyes. It was pitch-black except for lights that shimmered through the not-too-distant trees. The unfamiliar room seemed immense, without walls. He barely made out the gray furniture that loomed in the blackness around him. Turning onto his side he reached for Alma. The stone-cold bed was empty. Sammy squeezed his eyes shut and thought of Alma Negron. Her face, square and plump, smiled at him from the bar stool at Aqui Me Quedo.

The night club Aqui Me Quedo sat on the highway which stretched to Red Hook dock on the eastern end of the Caribbean island of St. Thomas. Everyone knew each other there. At weekends and at Sunday cock fights, customers raised hell from early until late. Their boisterous companions were mostly Latin women who queened the bar stools, drank and flirted with men before dragging them off to tiny rooms upstairs. Alma Negron did not appear often, and when she picked up a man, she took him outside Aqui Me Quedo.

Sammy Smalls, a dark, stocky, dreadlocked mechanic and Rock Steady, his taller, muscular work mate, were addicted to the smell, the flashing lights, and the twirling rush of bodies at Acqui Me Quedo. Sammy's felt warm all over the first time he saw Alma. He was seated at the back of the bar stirring his rum and coke when Rock Steady, elbowed him.

"Sammy, look! A wonder of de universe."

"Sweet thing, eh. Is me lucky night, Steady."

Alma sat facing them. The rum punch in her glass shook mildly as she swayed on a stool to a salsa tune on the jukebox. Her tight fitted jeans displayed plump, solid thighs and a small waist. Sammy's eyes ran down her curving hips and up again. Huge breasts protruded from a green halter top. He wanted to rest his head between her cleavage.

"Steady, I feel I going win de lottery."

"You think you could catch her?"

"Steady, she not a fish."

"You know what I mean, Sammy. Rope her in with small talk.

"Well, I not roping anybody. She not a cow. That's not me style."

"You got style, Sammy?"

"No. I going be meself."

"Sammy, you want her?"

"Of course, I want her." His light brown shirt was damp under the armpits. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his sweaty face.

"Well, come up with something good."

"Stop needling me," Steady.

Sammy wiped his face again and stuffed his handkerchief in his back pocket. "O.K. I going." He walked unsteadily to the front of the bar, looking back once at Steady. He straightened his slumping shoulders, then smiled. Alma Negron sat before him.

"Me name's Sammy Smalls." He extended wet hands. Alma's plump, light fingers grasped his. He pulled his hands back, surprised at the weightlessness of the handshake.

"Alma Negron," she whispered.

The deep-set grey eyes on her caramel colored face, hypnotized Sammy.

"Let's dance. It's carnival time, you know. No, no, no don't stop de carnival. No, no, no, don't stop de Bacchanal."Alma broke out in song as she grabbed him and spun him onto the dance floor cluttered with gyrating bodies.

Dancing with Alma was dancing with air. She held him, twirled him around, leaving him dizzy, his mind in a whirl-wind. As they danced, her grey eyes glowed like a cat's in the dark.

"El Gato." The name popped into his head as her long nails clutched and clawed him.

"You like me?" she purred into his ear. Long nails walked down his back.

Sammy trembled. Alma held up his limp body during the next number, a slow cha-cha-cha. He woke from his trance alone on the floor. A couple clung to each other in the spotlight. A slow, oldie competed with drunken chatter in the room. It was just past midnight at Aqui Me Quedo.

Alma always left him like that every time they danced, he unaware of his surroundings, transported to another world. Steady said she usually escaped before twelve. Sammy suspected that she was married to a man who worked a late shift, maybe a security guard, who wasn't stocky, and didn't have rough, chiselled cheek bones like he had. He imagined the husband to be possessive of his tall, caramel-colored Venus. Sammy named Alma's husband "The Bull Dog." He hated this man who abducted Alma from Aqui Me Quedo around midnight. He wanted Alma for himself.

Sammy proposed to her each time they met. He brooded when Alma didn't show up. She popped in mostly on moonlit nights. He waited for her outside the bar under a mango tree. Moonlight streamed through its branches. He watched her extend firm legs out the dark, blue taxi's door . Then it would speed off, its occupants protected by gray tinted windows. He was convinced that Bull Dog dropped her off at Aqui Me Quedo on his way to work.

"So you come." Sammy hugged her.

"Yes, I here. You think I wasn't coming? I know you don't trust me."

"Yes, I trust you." He held her soft, light hands and led her inside the bar. "Is your friend I don't trust. By the way, what he do?"

"Business." She smiled. Her cheeks swelled.

"What kind of business?"

"His hand in everything."

"Wish I could mash them."

"You too jealous!"

Sammy ordered her a banana daiquiri and she settled down on the bar stool. He sprinted across the room to the jukebox, watched his coins danced down its slot. A calypso blared from the machine. "Bend down, touch your toes, draw back and let your bumsy roll."

Everyone dashed to the dance floor. Alma's shoulders swung from side to side as she waited for Sammy to plough through the crowd to meet her. She took control. The flashing lights, reflecting on her grey eyes, dazzled him. She spun him round. He clung to her, his head stuck between large, breasts.

"You going marry me, Alma!"

"Who tell you that?"

"Me heart tell me." He attempted to hold her still but she kept on dancing.

"Alma," he shouted above the music. "I beg you, leave Bull Dog and marry me."

"Who?"

"Sorry dumpling, I mean, you friend."

She smiled enigmatically. "You can come home with me tonight."

"What you say, Alma?" He thought rum had impaired his hearing.

"Tonight's the night," Alma whispered. "Come!"She pulled him outside and shoved him into the waiting tinted-windowed taxi.

Alma kissed him, her tongue reaching down to his soul. She chatted incessantly during the 20 minutes ride over Raphune Hill and across the town. They left the taxi near the Jewish burial ground. An old plantation house loomed ahead of them. The colonial structure, partly hidden by trees, stood behind the Jewish burial ground. The silhouette of a large veranda, which occupied the entire front of the house, seemed to dance between the trees. Alma led the way. Pulling a key from her purse, she opened a large door and flowed mirage-like into the front room. The ceiling was a high dome. Dark, velvet drapes covered the open windows that sucked the wind in and somewhere let in a little light from a nearby street lamp. Sammy shivered. White candles rested on long rectangular tables placed around the scantily fitted room. Sammy, befuddled by rum and the smell of Alma's scented breast, stood, rooted. She glided silently into another room. Tired of standing, Sammy climbed onto a nearby table, removed the candles, stretched out and waited. He dozed.

Sometime later, he felt a thin bed sheet settle upon him. Alma slid under it and cuddled him. Her body was cold. But with sleep serenading him, Alma next to him and rum within him, he did not give a damn. Death could take him for all he cared.

A thunderclap followed by a downpour woke him again. Wet leaves swirled onto him. Gongolos dropped and crawled over his chest. He hollered at the sight of the large, black worms. Creeping daylight revealed his bed, a moss-covered grave. He closed his eyes, shook his head and wiped his face with the back of his hands. Opening one eye at a time, a cemetery emerged around him. Sammy fell down on his knees besides a headstone, shrieking. The screams, rushing from his mouth, reverberated in the trees. Terrified birds fled.

Grave diggers found his rigid body later that morning, mouth wide open.
Magic Island A Story by CHJ Rousseau

A car approached, creeping toward me at a congaree's pace, headlights on high beam intensifying the darkness around, blinding me. I waited for it to speed up and pass, but it just kept crawling closer, and closer... I prepared to scream and take to my heels. But where would I run? Who would hear me? What would they do if they heard? No one got involved any more—too many good Samaritans had not survived their helpful impulses in this place.

The car kept coming, drawing nearer as I forced myself to keep walking, to keep cool. It drew abreast, stopped—then revved twice and sped off.

What—what was that about? Feeling hysteria coming on, I stopped for a moment, two, hyperventilating. Come on, come on. Not too far again...

This little town, a village really, is called Blue Basin. Sounds magical, doesn't it? Conjures visions of sparkling pools reflecting azure skies, nestling amidst protecting hills of lush primeval forest. Here, bird calls greet the dawn and accompany the day. Feathery streamers of impromptu cascades appear on the hillsides after heavy showers to visit their half-sisters, the permanent waterfalls that grace the valley.

This is a rich valley—and I'm not referring to the commercial success of the weed fields over on Cameron Hill. The north-east trade winds washing over the mountains have the tang of the Atlantic that lies just beyond. At night, across this valley, drift constellations which most pitiful earthbound dwellers of towns and suburbs never see, except when the power company stages a blackout, prising them away from the television by force, and there's darkness all around to remind them that there's a world out there, with a sky, and stars, unbounded by living room walls. Yes, it's a rich valley, a beautiful place, but that is just part of the picture; the power outages reveal other things too, the not-so-pretty ones that burgeon in the dark alongside all that natural beauty.

I live in Blue Basin, and I need to get to the shop that's a mile away in the village. The old car won't start. The short-drop taxis are unreliable at night. It is Saturday evening and I need to move, to breathe, to escape from this house where my thoughts are closing in on me—thoughts of unpaid bills, overstretched budgets, and the tightrope I walk every day to make it from one paycheque to the next.

I must get to the shop, need to get to the shop.

So I leave the house, a few dollar bills grasped in my fist. I soon leave my neat neighbourhood behind and venture on to Blue Basin Road, then turn on to Cicada, passing some appreciative loiterers on the corner. I gaze down this road and my steps slow: the road resembles a dark tunnel with no light at the end. Where are the streetlights? I begin to recall the daily newscasts: murder, rape, mutilation and grisly combinations of the three, sashaying through my memory like a phantasmagoric parade, each more horrifying than the last. Screaming headlines. Photographs in which blood is the dominant chroma. Video clips that make me turn my head away, footage of the bawling bereaved, innocent of the cold corneas of the cameras recording their raw grief. Bodies strewn across the country in death-sprawls, sometimes in pieces. Neighbours stuttering: "But—but—that boy don't be in nothing! How they could shoot him just so, just so?" And, "Why he had to kill she? So woman can't leave man again? Who going to mind the children now he in jail and they mother dead?"

I want to turn back; I keep going. I console myself: at least there are several houses along that dark road that I must pass. If I scream, someone will hear. If I am given time to scream, that is...

There is a house on the right. Someone is sitting on a porch, in the dark, but I cannot see him. I can see the tiny red glow of his cigarette, though. I wrinkle my nose as the acrid perfume drifts over. Correction: his ciga-weed.

"Helloooo. Psst. Psst."

I quicken my stride.

"Aye, goodnight! Aye, psst..."

I leave the unseen man and his friendly overtures behind. The road stretches longer than my memory of it. I hurry along, sometimes passing groups of people speaking in undertones, relaxing when I discern female voices in the dark, side-stepping parts of the road that seem more impenetrably black than the rest, listening for steps behind me, peering into bushy areas, unable to see the pebbly, potholed pitch on which I tramped, hoping that no steaming pile of gobar awaited my scantily sandalled feet. That would be the least of my worries, I can't help reflecting, remembering the mapepire I had killed just that morning in the yard. I entertain myself by attempting to recall the body count in this little valley for the year to date. Five? Six? More?

I try a different angle on the numbers game: how many drug dealers had I passed plying their trade in the dark? What were the odds in favour of a police car appearing to make a bust? Would the goodly gentlemen in blue buy my story that I just needed to get to the shop, surrounded as I was by weed and crack-cocaine commerce in all its shadowy glory? I considered the odds of police appearing and felt better: the authorities had better sense than to come up here at this time of night. I plodded on, finding strange comfort in the annihilating darkness, letting my thoughts drift along their chosen paths, itinerant.

Ten minutes after Ornella left the staff room, shoulders set in a determined square and weariness crinkling the corners of her eyes, she tramped back in, a lone student in her wake with a deflated backpack flopping from his shoulders.

"They gone," she replied to the query in my raised eyebrows. "Crawled through a hole in the fence by the football field. Except for this one."

The boy shuffled from one foot to the next, looking virtuous.

"Miss, I remind them that the test is today, Miss."

"Well, you are going to sit right here and do it."

"Miss, you have a extra pen?"

"Here."

"I can't find my copy book, Miss. You have a page to lend me?" He gave up the pretence of rummaging through the empty bag.

Ornella placed one hand on a hip and looked at the boy.

"Allyou jokey, yes." She took two pages from a binder on her desk and thumped them down in front of the boy who was now fiddling with a mobile phone.

"Andrew!"

"Oh gosh Miss! Is mih modder who BBM-in' mih about something important!"

"Put. Away. The phone."

"Miss, this test is for course marks?"

Ornella looked at me, and I looked at her. She turned back to the boy. "Yes, Andrew. I told you that last week. And the week before. And..."

An uproar broke out from the direction of Block Y. Students began to stream past the doorway shouting, "Fight! Fight!"

I bent my head and focused on the unintelligible script, titled "S.A.", in front of me. Andrew half rose from the chair. Ornella's glare froze him.

"Sit!"

"Oh gosh, Miss! Is fight!"

He wilted and picked up the question paper but his attention was on the louvres, or rather, the commotion somewhere outside the thin grey metal slats. There were screams, and shouts. Shrill laughter. Mr. Mahabir, the biology teacher, rolled into the staff room, wiping perspiration from his face with a wrinkled kerchief. I glanced up just as he flopped down on the battered armchair, slipped a metal flask from his briefcase, took a sip, twisted the cover and put it away again. Coffee, he claimed. No one was fooled.

"I don't know what the ass going on in this place. A student just run past my lab waving a Chinese chopper." He slumped deeper into the faded cushions and closed his eyes. "Two more years," he intoned to no one in particular. "Two more years!"

I did not look up this time. I was tackling the "S.A." from the top again, my red pen poised in midair, tremulous, unsure where to begin its campaign on the incoherent scrawl on the page.

"That's the third fight this week. Two yesterday. Like we going to break a record this term." Ornella was looking through the louvres at the scene in the car park.

"I wasn't here yesterday."

"So you missed the blood-letting, then. A girl from Garment Construction stabbed a girl from Home Ec. With scissors."

"Yes. I heard. I missed all the excitement. Lucky me."

I put down the pen, placed the unmarked "S.A." in a manila folder, stood and took my bag out of the rusted grey locker behind my chair. "I'm done for today. Enjoy your weekend, Ornie."

Two deans passed the open door, each gripping a disheveled student; one boy scowled while tears stained the cheek of the other. I paused, letting them get clear, then walked out into the glare of the car park. I could feel the tension in the back of my neck and my shoulders. The headache was beginning to pound; I hoped it wouldn't ruin my weekend as it had a habit of doing. Thank goodness my mother was taking the children from today—at least they wouldn't have to whisper and tiptoe around the house while keeping me supplied with washcloths dipped in ice water to soothe my throbbing head. I smiled, as I always did when I thought about my two little sunbeams, and the tightness in my shoulder eased a little.

The sky was luminous without a cloud in sight and the air was crystalline after the morning rain. The poui trees, adorned in delicate nuances of lilac and pink, lined the driveway. A chicken hawk wheeled in the liquid air high above. The sunshine stung my arms as I made my way to the rusty little Mazda.

I focused on the hawk.

A dim streetlight appeared ahead, and I was, hallelujah, on the main road, the shop a mere two hundred yards away.

I joined the line strung out along the pavement in front of the shop. The queue inched forward. The man in front of me reached the cashier sitting behind the round window, opened his mouth to make his request and—the lights went out!

"Oh gawwwd!" A unanimous appeal to the mercies of Jesus, Allah, Krishna, Jah and the power company.

"They load-sheddin' again," muttered a voice on my left.

"A twenty-inch cable bust and they using a sixteen-inch, so is the whole country they sufferin'," enlightened a man on my right.

"I best go home, oui? If the lights come back, then I go come back too." Two women departed.

The small crowd around the hole in the wall trickled away and people on the street drifted off. Should I go home? I reflected on the long, dark, and now very lonely walk back and decided to stay put. I turned around and my eyes collided with the too-bright, too-bold stare of a dougla-rasta sitting on the railing near me. He continued to stare, unabashed. There was something deeply disquieting about that intense, enigmatic gaze. I looked away.

Jee-sus Christ. What am I doing here?

I stood. I waited. I ignored the profanity of the couple waiting near the railing. Whew! They were just having a normal conversation, no raised voices, no anger, just chitchat—but the language! My ears and sensitivities burned. A man shoved past me and the other stalwarts who had remained in the line.

"Allyuh hurry up and light them candle, nuh man. Ah want two brown bread." A long pause. "Is two brown bread ah say ah want."

"What yuh mean—yuh don't want this bread? Ain't this bread brown?" the young lady inside enquired.

"Ah say ah want brown bread! Call Chin in there and tell him to get two brown bread for meh!" I peered through the locked glass doors into the candle-lit interior, trying to figure out which of the people milling around inside the shop was Chin. I gave up. They were all Indian. A car pulled up and a man got out, distracting me from the brown-bread drama.

"What happen, they not openin' the door?"

"You mad or what? The current gone; this is bandit time."

The newcomer laughed, got in his car and sped off.

I pondered my mental state. Why wasn't I at home, front and back doors double-bolted, windows burglar-proofed, vicious (hopefully) guard dog (next door) patrolling, keeping me safe, secure, or at least providing that illusion? I turned around and again encountered the sly-bold, unwavering stare of the dougla-rasta. I closed my eyes and sighed.

"Is not this bread ah want! Ah want brown bread!"

"Is whole wheat bread you want?"

"Ah want brown bread!" He was shouting now. A man appeared next to the girl behind the glass window with the hole.

"Look your money! Go from here! This hour, current done gone, and you want people to go in the back and get brown bread for you? The shop closed, you hear? Go from here!"

"Ah go put a lash on you! Allyou tryin' to embarrass me or what?"

The man inside appeared in the doorway. "You always talkin' lash! Look me here. Come and lash me, nuh!"

The bread buyer, who had begun walking away, spun around. He loomed, his muscles bulging. The skinny little man in the doorway looked up at him and screamed, enveloping me in a miasma of stale alcohol: "Yuh blasted jackass!" The muscular young man lunged for the door which was suddenly slammed shut with the little grey man on the safe side. Bystanders hauled the thwarted bread buyer away. They clutched his arms, his vest, anywhere they could hold. He was half-dragged, half-carried, still screaming obscenities.

"This ain't done, ah tell yuh! Ah goin' to shoot allyou! This ain't done!"

In the ensuing silence, a laconic voice spoke from the shadows.

"Chin playin' brave and openin' door to fight, then he runnin'? The feller shoulda hit him a lash. He woulda get sober one-time."

I stood and reflected. Why was everyone so angry? Why did nothing work? And why exactly was I out here in the middle of the madness, probably endangering my life? Suppose the young man came back with a "piece" and I got caught in the cross-fire...

Lord, my children. He would come and take them. After all the years of not supporting them, my good, bright, beautiful children, he would suddenly appear and take them away from my mother, my sisters, everyone who loved them... Oh God, what am I doing here?

I blinked as the lights came on. A machine hummed. The line jerked forward. I paid for my purchase through the hole in the glass, grabbed my bounty and strode away. I really wanted to scuttle off but figured such cowardly behaviour would attract every human predator within a two-mile radius. I turned onto the dark street once more, my heart sinking. Would I make it through a second time? I was really pushing my luck now.

Two men were sitting on a culvert on the corner. They stopped talking as I passed. I walked a few paces, looked back, and realized they had disappeared.

That was fast. Where had they gone? I had heard no footsteps, nothing. They just—disappeared. Abracadabra.

Stop shaking! I admonished my legs, urging them to go faster still. A snatch of a David Rudder calypso began playing in my head: "Once upon a time there was a magic island, full of magic people..."

I hated when my brain did that—always providing a soundtrack like my life was some damned movie.

That was when the car decided to approach me at a snail's pace, scaring the crap out of me, then racing away into the night. Some idiot having a laugh at my expense? As my great-grandmother used to say, what is joke for schoolboys is death for crapaud.

I made it through the long, dark tunnel of Cicada Road and turned on to Blue Basin Road. Once again I ignored the hecklers calling to me from the corner. I was actually glad to see them still there, young and harmless-seeming, standing under a streetlight calibrating their manhood. I rounded a bend. On my left was an abandoned house that had been undermined by the ravine and now teetered on its edge, deep cracks running from the driveway to the roof; on my right nothing but bush and, behind the lush tangle, what Trinis euphemistically refer to as a river.

There was a sudden crackle of bushes to my right and my mind began to skitter. Those men on the bend could easily walk up the riverbed, run out through the bushes and pull me in.

Maybe it was just a dog in there. Or a manicou. Or a—a—

I took to my heels. Raced past the bushy part, through the whispering, eerily shadowed tunnel of the bamboo patch, along the edge where the road was falling into the river, skid on some gravel, stop, grab side, pant-pant-pant, off again, don't look back, run, run, come on feet, swing on to my street, don't stop now, past manicured verges and shapely shrubs, arrive at last, pause, open gate, skate to a stop at own front door, drop keys twice, open the damn thing, slam it shut, double-bolt those beautiful locks.

My heart was slamming in my chest. I hunched over, rasping, opened my hand to cradle the pain in my side—and there it was, crumpled but in one piece: my precious Lotto ticket.

I collapsed on to the couch. My heart slowed as I eased into a warm, familiar place. Tomorrow I could have no worries. Fix the Mazda—no, buy a decent car. A house in a safe place. Braces for Ryan. Ballet classes for Chrissy. I sank into that familiar place, purchasing sanity with the coin of delusion.

The slip of paper drifted from my fingers. I shook off my reverie, picked up the ticket, smoothed it out and placed it under the lamp so only a tip showed.
The Sieve of Time A Poem by Afzal Moolla

Cast ashore,

along the banks of time,

whirling through the passing years,

clinging to futile scribbles set in rhyme,

Cast ashore,

thrust into an unrehearsed pantomime,

clenching slivers of joy as weariness descends,

lulled into a peaceful slumber exhilaratingly sublime.

Cast ashore,

hazily adrift, a dandelion seed on the wings of time,

trapped in the sieve of spiralling memories,

caught between pristine bliss, and reeking slime.

Cast ashore,

flung aside for no discernible crime,

my human heart thuds with elusive hope,

though battered, bruised and covered in grime,

I stagger ashore, alone,

embracing each moment of detached, oblivious time.

Intervention A Story by Cher Corbin

Heavy lids opened slowly. Residues of crusted mucous stuck to the base of the once thick lashes now set in swollen red rims.

Eric lay entwined in the dirty patterned sheets on the small cot propped in the corner of the derelict chattel house. He raised his head and felt a searing pain at the base of his skull. His eyes were burning. He inhaled in short staggered breaths. His chest hurt and he felt his heart making sudden erratic thuds in its coronial cavity. He needed her. Where did she go? He screamed her name, but the only answer he received was the high pitched squeak of the rat he mistakenly hit as his hand rolled off the edge of the cot.

He tried desperately to make some sense of what was going on. This was the worst he knew he had ever felt. He was cold and in pain. He inhaled. His nostrils were assailed with the skanky scent of sewage. He placed his right hand down his side; the sheets were damp and sticky. The room was dark, damp and cold. The smell on his digits was nauseating. He placed his index finger in his mouth. It tasted like shit. Yes, that is what it was, his shit. He had defecated and urinated on the sheets. Not knowing how long he had lain there, he needed her, he missed her, and he wanted her badly....

Lady Snow,

I found refuge in your offerings.

With you I was never alone.

I saw your sounds and heard your lights.

I became your eager student.

Dancing to the kaleidoscopic beat

of your white crystals, lifting and gliding.

On a thermal of nasal air I would rise,

riding the vector, low to high.

You gave me what I wanted, what I needed, what I craved,

bliss, freedom, oblivion.

Eric tried to pull himself out of this reverie. He knew he was in trouble this time, serious trouble. It was difficult to think straight. He needed to feel her arms around him again. Fumbling to find a space for his feet on the cluttered floor, Eric used his fingers to pry open his eyelids. The pain was unbearable and his head swirled.

He heard a gurgling noise like water moving quickly down the kitchen sink drain. With a gut wrenching heave, his emaciated body vibrated with spasms as he wretched. He wrapped his arms around himself. Every hurl brought with it searing, blinding pain.

He screamed, "Oh God! I can't do this. Why have you left me?" he sobbed bitterly as he rocked back and forth. Eric opened his eyes wide; he thought he saw movement in the corner of the hut. He raised his arm, flicking at the cockroach that was feasting on the stained and crusty bruise that was self-inflicted; he thought he saw her. She was smiling.

"You have come for me," he whispered and lost consciousness.

His dreams were turbulent, violent and disturbing. Eric felt a burning in his arm and a warm shield enveloping his whole being. He felt his body lifting, seemingly suspended in mid-air. He heard noises, sirens maybe voices.

"Lift him gently, be careful, don't let that IV come out!"

He definitely was being propelled but in which direction he had no idea. There was a touch. Someone touched his forehead. Someone was close, he could feel their warm breath.

"Don't worry son, you gonna be alright, alright ya hear!"

"Lady, Lady" he tried to speak, but there was something covering his mouth and nose. "Is that you?" A meek smile behind the mask, "You have come for me. I knew you would," he lost consciousness again.

Eric felt a chill. This time it was not for lack of warmth in the room. This time it was from the latticed metal–type pillow he saw rotating in the corner. "What is that?" His mind tried to grapple with the images that were rapidly escorted to his brain through his eyes. He blinked and then closed them tightly. They didn't burn so much this time. He craned his neck to the right and finally understood what he was seeing. It was a fan in the corner, rotating on maybe too high a speed. This was the source of the cool air.

Eric tried to pull himself up on the bed to draw closer to the head board. Even these small movements caused searing pain, especially in his chest. He looked down towards his feet. He couldn't see them as they were covered in the sheets. He tried to lift his arms and realised they were restrained on the sides of the bed.

"What is this? What's going on here?" he screamed. "Help! Someone help me, please!" Eric pulled and yanked at the straps securing his wrists, jerking the bed as best he could, but with little strength.

The door at the foot of the bed opened. He saw her then. It was the same smile. She came towards him. "Hello Eric. And how are we feeling today?" she asked in a most sunny way. "You gave us quite a scare back there. We thought we had lost you."

Eric shook his head from side to side. "What was she talking about?" his mind screamed. "Lost me? How could you, I am right here," he snarled at the lady comforter in the blue and white uniform. "Get me out of this shit! Get me out of this! I am not an animal!"

How ironic these words were. The journey this young man had embarked on had carried him to many places: decrepit, unsanitary, destitute places. He had walked a path very few of us will ever tread. Now, he was saved, or that is what they told him. Miss Comforter sat next to him on the edge of the bed and fed him a few sips of water from the plastic cup on the side table. She relayed to him the events of the last seven days. Her voice was very soothing, he had to admit and he was feeling a little better. The pain in his head was subsiding and he could sit up without the room spinning. Despite this progress he still felt lost, he felt depressed.

I awake this day with only one thought on my mind.

One purpose, one objective,

to join you on one more journey.

This time, I feel no comfort in your arms.

I am confused.

My reality has been shattered.

Our love has been violated

by persons who think

they know what is best for me.

Lady, they have taken you from me

I lie alone on clean white sheets

in a place I do not know,

a place I do not care for.

Within the perfect storm of my thoughts

the wind gusts and I feel the dampness on my cheeks.

Eric was raised in an upper middle class family and they lived in the heights. To most he would be considered privileged in that he never wanted for anything. His parents had good jobs that provided sufficient income to support a family vacation to North America each year, the desired gifts and purchases for birthdays and Christmas in addition to a well-stocked pantry, bar and pocket for each of the residents in the household. As said before, he lacked for nothing.

To those who viewed this well-educated, business oriented family it would be expected that the order and satisfaction perceived would be translated to confidence and happiness. It was quite the contrary. The fly in the ointment was Eric.

Eric was a non-conformist in every sense of the word. He dressed differently, ate only when he was hunger, hated family dinners and despised the elaborate gatherings with the pompous family members laughing and telling stories whilst patting him on the back telling him how big he had grown. He hated them, he hated all of them.

His loathing did little for his sociability at school. He barely passed his tests as a result of not caring, not paying attention, thinking the teachers were absolute morons and having no interest in homework, assignments or promotional exams. Eric wanted to be rid of it all and he did try to achieve just that.

On Eric's eighteenth birthday he awoke to a morning, just like any other. His mother was prattling in the kitchen and his younger sister was singing at the top of her voice, out of tune with the music she constantly listened to that was playing on her I-touch. Her cat-a-howling was becoming unbearable so he rushed through his door, stormed down the stairs to the kitchen, yanked the head phones from her bobbing head and threw the music device across the room to smash against the wall. What he hadn't realised in his fury was that the lead cord of the headphones had caught in the young girl's earring and the force of propulsion towards the wall ripped the sleeper from her ear leaving a nasty tear and blood everywhere.

Her screams were deafening. His mother turned around from the stove and immediately dropped the frying pan, with the partially cooked scrambled eggs, all over the floor. She ran to his sister and tried to put pressure on her ear with the dish towel. Eric's father came hurriedly down the stairs and pushed Eric out of the way. He was furious. When he saw what had happened he turned to his son and slapped him hard in the face. The youngster's teeth reverberated and he tasted his own blood.

"Get out of here!" his father bellowed, "Look what you have done. I don't want to ever see your face again you good for nothing piece of shit! GET OUT!"

Eric grabbed his haversack and ran out the door. He hopped on his racer and pushed as hard as his legs would go to get as far away as he could. Unfortunately, living on a small island, far is still pretty close.

He knew he should have stayed and help his little sis but he always hated how is father treated him. He never listened, the bastard! "I'll show him now. I won't go back. No I won't!" he yelled to no one in particular.

The rains started to drizzle and the road became shiny and slippery. He was unsure where he was, but the streets became narrower.

He always tried to avoid rain. For as long as he could remember he sheltered from the rain. "The good thing about the rain," he mused, "was the smell it left behind." His olfactory association was that of freshness, damp wet earth: this comforted him in a strange way.

He peered into the distance, to the right side of the street and saw two youths who should probably be at school, leaning against a broken down chattel. He approached them cautiously. This was the only building that provided any shelter as the raindrops were pounding now and he was getting soaked. He could feel his socks expanding in his new high tops.

The boys looked at each other and then at this high brown dude who wanted to scotch in their space. As young ones would do, they metaphorically displayed their feathers, but after exchanging names, they helped Eric position the bicycle so it wouldn't be left in the gutter in front of the lot.

They sat in silence after that. The wind was picking up and started driving the rain towards them. The taller of the two boys, who happened to be the skinniest with very tiny baby-like teeth, suggested they find a way to get inside. They followed him and found themselves in a dark unkempt space with broken furniture, empty Styrofoam food containers, beer bottles and cans strewn on the floor. The room smelt of urine and cotton candy. A sickly sweet scent that made Eric want to vomit.

There was a window to the rear that was partially boarded and allowed some light to filter through not unlike spotlights on the performer who is centre stage. Tallboy crouched on his haunches and proceeded to open the small green drawstring canvas bag he had previously slung over his shoulder. He pulled out an old rusty Altoids tin and looked in the direction of his partner.

"You want a hit bro?" he smirked.

Shortman grinned displaying teeth not much bigger than Tallboy's but decidedly more yellow.

"Yea big man, let's roll," he grunted and squatted on his ample thighs.

Eric drew closer, entranced by the movements of this duet. The care with which they placed the slim papers on their knees and sprinkled the pinch of dried pungent vegetable matter along the crease. Tallboy's forehead was furled as if he was performing the most intricate of experiments. He then extended his hand to his partner who seemed to instinctively know what to do without a word being passed between them. A Ziploc bag, the smallest Eric had ever seen, was ceremoniously offered and Tallboy took a small pinch of the white substance and placed it on the bed of what looked like dried blossoms and sticks. "We gonna be flying now!"

Eric blinked his eyes furiously, was he day dreaming again? No, it was those memories of his first time. These had returned to him in a flurry this day as the rain again pelted on the window of this small room he had called home for the past six weeks. He peered through the glass pane, now frosty with the condensation of his breath; he could see in the distance a turbulent ocean.

The Centre was located on a picturesque cliff and presented an ironic juxtaposition of sanctuary and calm against the rough waters that beat against the rocky ledge on a daily basis. Eric could more relate to the turbulence than the calm. He had what seemed like forever to think and contemplate in this place. He had made his decision.

I can't stay here!

I must go!

Away from this hell hole they call a sanctuary.

I leave now,

knowing that I shall never return.

I leave now,

for better or for worse.

I know not where I am going

but I know I will arrive

where

I can find me.

It took some doing but he avoided the burly orderly who sat at the front entrance of the Centre and he made his way across the garden beds, over the low fence and down the northern side of the property. He knew where he needed to be. He knew who he needed to be with.

Mother, I am here.

I stand before you now in this place.

Green and mossy, dark yet beautiful,

beneath me lie sharp craggy rocks,

caressed and teased by cerulean waters

crashing on the verticals.

Higher and higher you

baptise me with tingling sprays.

Mother,

I need you, I bow before you.

Resplendent in your glory

you cry for me, your child.

I feel your tears

settling like cool soothing droplets

on my hot and trembling face.

I reach for you!

Come touch me!

Feel my being as I grip the edge

of this cracked and eroded space.

I wish for serenity and solace.

Envelop me in your turbulence.

Make me forget my pain.

Make me remember my joy.

Eric stood at the edge of the cliff for what seemed like an eternity. The intensity of the rains had lessened a bit but the water was still drenching his already sodden shirt. This time he didn't care. This time he was searching for something else, something that was by far more important than his discomfort. He wanted peace. He could not continue living this nightmare. It must end.

Mother,

remove the barrier between us.

Come for me and

hasten me to your depths.

Swaddle me and

ease my Soul.

Eric moved closer to the edge. If he leaned over just a bit, he could make out the dark jagged rocks at the base of the cliff. He tried to take another step forward, but his legs would not budge despite the pummelling wind. His body behaved like a bobbing Tahitian dancing doll the taxi-men in the village place on their dashboards. Something was wrong.

The rains intensified just a little, the wind was now singing, pushing him, whispering, moaning....

Are you telling me

that your beauty is not to be tarnished

by my selfish yearning

to exit this world?

Another body to float, support and carry

on your white water tops and tides.

Turn your back on me then.

You were my friend.

You bathed me when no one else would.

You fed me when no one else could.

The rains suddenly stopped. The wind instantly died. Grey clouds parted and a sliver of light extending from sky to the water's surface appeared, disappeared and then, became a rainbow. Eric shivered,

Mother,

I am afraid,

I am petrified.

He knew what he had to do. Eric dropped to his knees and wrapped his trembling arms around his chest. He was crying, sobbing uncontrollably.

I will take your advice

and listen.

I will open my eyes

and lift my head

as I see you reflected in that which is above me.

Eric heard hurried footsteps behind him, voices raised, concerned, yelling now "There he is!"

Before they reached him, Eric gazed out to the ocean one last time. The sky was brightening now. He smiled.

Life to have, life to hold,

My life.
Red A Poem by Cher Corbin

red ribbons

red ribbons  
tie kinky brown hair  
pixies

ponytails

bobby socks

baby dolls

baskets and bears

cute chubby cherub cheeks

crease with laughter and tears

now blossoms and blooms

as sweet innocence disappears

barbie dolls

glitter and lip gloss

create fashion with flair

white velvet sashes

red bandeaus in hair

strewn over the floor

beads

baubles and glue

this passion for life

adolescence rings true

words of wisdom cut short

swift back chat to the keeper

just pushing the envelope

no fear of grim reaper

burning red in the face

spitting vicious retorts

respects no one's space

in this dangerous sport

refusing to listen  
to lessons

to pleas

protecting the wicket

batting close to the knees

on a reckless journey

all diva'd and bleached

will bring forth regrets

this is constantly preached

the pleasures of self

consume and provide

the escape and the daring

no protection

just ride

red seas return monthly

expressed sighs of relief

just a pause in the passion

a menstrual brief

resuming the patterns

the dances

the dates

the skimpy red dresses

those killer heels quake

but something goes wrong

the fun starts to wane

red fire balls pelt

bring abdominal pain

the rumors you hear

the whispers

the taunts

the friends you once had

stay clear of old haunts

your favorite colour

now symbolic of pain

embarrassment and suffering

your family's disdain

you thought you were smart

all clever and sweet

now all that is left

are the tears that you weep

red ribbons

red ribbons

no longer tie hair

the colour of passion

of vanity fair

this satin red ribbon

blood colour of life

will cut a new path

immune to the knife

wrapped tightly this virus

looped awareness is found

red ribbons now smaller

on chests pinned and sound

the colours of red

pink

burgundy

magenta too

are now all absorbed

in a pale deathly hue

red ribbons

red ribbons

if only we could

return to a life

once vibrant and pure

a dream

a desire

no lanterns to rub

just regrets and reminders

of red ribbons we loved
Not Me A Poem by Graham Bannister

Sitting Alone

Staring out to sea, is it the horizon he watches?

The sun how it sets?

He sits and he stares with a look in his eye.

A look so sad, so alone, just staring out to sea.

'Are you ok?" I ask slowly moving by his side

He beckons me to sit on the sand a while, as he stares out to sea

Not at me.

He's an elderly man, on a vacation he had planned

Months ago with his wife, the love of his life

She too loves to sit and stare at the sea

It's their anniversary, fifty years of wedded bliss

She loves jewels he says, now holding an ornate box in his hand

Gently and lovingly he caresses it, as he stares out to sea

Not at me

From far away they came, running from the cold

To the island of paradise where the sunset is gold

He looks at the box a smile on his face

Staring out to sea

Not at me

He smiles ever so slight

for that second as the golden ball sets

He squeezes the box and on the horizon the green light flashes

He opens it gently and in the waves, spreads her ashes.

A tear down his cheek, staring out to sea

Not at me
Caught A Story by Carol Mitchell

Lauren was nervous and it showed. In fact, it radiated from her body and made her two young children so agitated and restless that one hour after their bed time they were still like jack-in-the boxes refusing all of her attempts to get them into bed.

"But Mommy..." they protested as she insisted that it was too late for another bedtime story. Usually it was never too late for a book on the weekend, but tonight was different. She needed them in bed and fast asleep so that she would have time to prepare the house and herself for her visitor. She kissed the children good night, turned on the fan and started to leave.

"When is Daddy coming back?" her daughter asked, her voice full of longing. Lauren felt a stab of guilt and wished that she still felt that desire to have her husband home.

"He'll be back from his trip in two days, honey, and I promise to read to you tomorrow," she responded over her shoulder as she closed their door and headed to her bathroom.

She sat on the toilet and dropped her head into her hands.

"Don't cry, don't cry" she muttered to herself over and over. The last thing she needed tonight was to think about John. She thought of the parting shot that he gave before leaving for this trip three weeks ago. She had been pleading with him to explain why he was so distant. He had given a sigh of gentle exasperation and spoke as one would speak to a persistent child.

"You are overreacting. We've just grown apart. It happens. We have to stay together for the congregation... and the children," he added almost like a footnote. "If we give each other the space we need, we can both be happy."

Lauren stood under the shower and let the pain that his coolness caused her wash over her and down the drain. The pain was replaced by anger and she recalled the promise she made to herself to follow his suggestion and find her own pleasure as she saw fit.

After her shower, she stood in front of her full length mirror and examined her body critically. The toll of two pregnancies showed in her sagging breasts and the folds and stretch marks on her stomach. She had always been proud of maintaining her weight, but tonight she noticed every bump and spot. They revealed the wear and tear of the passing years on her body.

'No longer the body of a teenager,' she thought with a sigh, 'but it'll have to do.'

She sprayed herself with perfume and smothered her brown skin with cream until it shone. She appraised herself again, spinning around and looking over her shoulder.

'Not TOO bad,' she thought, 'At least the gym is beginning to pay off... in more ways than one!'

She looked through her closet for something to wear. Everything looked old and frumpy. Finally she settled on a girlish dress that fitted at the waist and flared, falling just above her knees. It accentuated her legs, her best asset; the only part of her body that was unmarked by the passage of time.

They had agreed that she would leave the garden gate unlocked so she would not be seen letting him in. The gate and the front door, actually, so that he could enter surreptitiously. Although the house was on a half acre of land and quite far away from their nearest neighbour, she could not take the chance of a passerby seeing her letting a man into her house so late at night, especially when the man was not her husband.

She was now as giddy as a school girl on a first date. She walked down the hallway to the children's bedroom. She opened the door quietly and peaked in. They were finally fast asleep. She kissed them and neither of them stirred. She closed the door and headed out of the bedroom area into the kitchen. She opened a cupboard and reached for some candles. The bottle of salt toppled over.

"Oh shoot!" she said softly, and without thinking she grabbed the broom and started to sweep. "Oh shoot!" she said again.

Her grandmother had always warned her never to sweep at night. "Bad luck," she would say shaking her head, "very bad luck. You might as well break a mirror, instead." It was one of many superstitions that her Trinidadian grandmother had drummed into her head as a child. Sometimes she found it hard to completely disregard them.

"I guess now I'm supposed to throw a bit of salt over my shoulder for luck," she said out loud with a laugh, finishing the clean up job quickly.

She heard the sound of a car approaching slowly. Her heart rate quickened with anticipation, but the car continued past her house. She sat in the living room and contemplated having a drink of wine to calm her nerves. She had never done anything like this before. She had never even been touched by any man except her husband. But it had been a long time since he had touched her with love. She tried to believe that somewhere inside the reticent soul he had become, he still loved her, but she could no longer reach him and it was not enough to live with a memory of what their life had once been. When she met Mike at the gym it had been like a breath of fresh air. Although he was almost 15 years younger than she was, he looked at her the way her husband did when they first met.

She knew that she was being naïve, but she felt young and desirable when he spoke to her. When they first met, she had convinced herself that there was nothing wrong with a little flirting. The attention was fun, especially from a dark, handsome and very muscular man. He had asked her for advice on his plans to open his own gym and so she met him for a drink to discuss the prospects. They did not talk business at all on that first date. They watched the sunset at a bar overlooking the sea and Lauren talked about herself and her life as the wife of a prominent clergyman. She enjoyed being in the spot light for a change.

One harmless meeting over drinks after the gym turned into two, three and then four. When he spoke, which was usually only to ask her a probing question about her life, she was caught up in the sensuous movement of his full, almost feminine lips. The last time they met, he had leaned over questioningly pursing those lips in her direction and she had responded in kind. After all, it was just one kiss. But when his lips touched hers, she knew that it would not stop there. The passion that rose in her was immediate and tremendous. There was a physical movement in her loins.

'Loins... do people still use that word?' she wondered, laughing at herself.

So, here she was risking everything to get closer to that feeling that would make her feel like a complete woman once more; that feeling of being irresistible to a special man.

She tried to anticipate what it would be like once he arrived. She would invite him to sit on the couch. Hopefully she wouldn't be too nervous. She would offer him some wine to lighten the mood. She wondered if he would make the first move and how she would respond.

She heard a soft knock and then the door opened. Mike stepped in.

"Lauren! Wow!" he exclaimed, "you look.... you look fantastic."

She took in his appearance. He had chosen a dark red fitted t-shirt, which went well with his dark skin and really accentuated the muscular physique of his arms and his six-pack abdominals, which Lauren could just barely discern where his shirt was pulled taut, tucked into his black jeans.

Before she could respond to his greeting, before she could execute the script she had planned, he walked over to her, took her in his arms and kissed her passionately, roughly. He was only a few inches taller than she was and their bodies fit together comfortably just as Lauren had imagined the few times that she had allowed herself to picture herself in Mike's arms. His hands moved on her body, starting at her back and then drifting downwards, caressing her legs and raising her skirt. With one arm around her waist, his mouth still on hers, he turned her around and led her towards the couch.

Lauren didn't know how to respond. She enjoyed the kiss at first, savoring the passionate embrace with her eyes tightly shut, but when his hands began to roam, she thought, 'This is going too fast.'

She opened her eyes and almost bit Mike's lip as she screamed in horror.

There was another man was in the room. He was standing in front of her. He must have come in behind Mike, but the couple, locked in their passionate embrace, had neither heard the door nor noticed his arrival. He wore a ski mask and his clothing was black except that his shirt had a white collar that reminded Lauren of a priest.

He looked at Lauren with bemused eyes. He put a finger to his lips and pointed downwards. Lauren's eyes followed his finger and she realized that he was pointing a gun at Mike's back. She barely stifled another scream.

The man spoke. "Put your hands where I can see them."

Lauren took a step back from Mike and raised her hands in the air.

"Both of you," the man ordered.

Mike, who had stepped away from Lauren's embrace but still faced her, turned around slowly, raising his hands above his head.

"Now lady, where's the safe," the burglar continued.

"We don't have a safe," Lauren replied, "we don't keep any money in the house. I'll give you what I have in my purse, just please, please," she begged, "leave us alone."

"Don't lie to me," the man shouted, "I know you must have a safe in the house."

He took one step closer to Lauren. His eyes, no longer smiling, bore steadily and menacingly into hers. "Now where is it?" he growled.

Lauren wondered how he was so sure about the safe. They had only just had it installed and she had not really discussed it with many people. Her husband had recently developed an eccentric distrust of banks and insisted on having a safe at home. She had mentioned it to Mike because she had had to miss the gym on the day that it was installed and they had laughed about the absurdity of the idea that their cash would be safer at home than in the bank. She glanced over at her intended lover.

The intruder followed her gaze and said "Hmmm, come to think of it, this guy doesn't look like the Reverend Martin I've seen on the TV. What exactly is going on here?"

"Just take what you want and get out," Lauren said.

"Yeah, I'll take what I want," he replied, leering at her. "Tonight and any other night I come back. Or I'll tell the good Reverend your dirty little secret. A preacher's wife;" he continued, "you all are the worst; living this sham pious life, getting rich from poor people's donations. You build fancy buildings, travel all over the world while the poor in your congregation go home to their suffering every Sunday, feeling like they must be sinners when in fact they are the saints. Well, it's time now for you to suffer."

He grabbed Lauren by the hand and pulled her roughly towards his chest. He held her in his arms.

Lauren tried to focus on the problem and ignore the fear that threatened to paralyse her. She stood trembling in his arms for a moment, ideas racing through her head. It was two of them against one. If she could distract the intruder, Mike should be able to overpower him.

She stomped hard on his left foot. With only a second's pause, she raised her right foot to knee him in the groin. Then she snapped her hands out sharply, freeing herself from his grasp and knocking the gun out of his hands.

She wondered if Mike was in shock. He just stood there watching the drama unfold.

"Get the gun, Mike, get the gun!" she cried, pulling the ski mask off of the intruder's face as he bent over, groaning and holding his groin. She looked at him and thought that his face looked quite familiar.

Mike ran to where the gun had fallen and picked it up. The intruder straightened up slowly and laughed.

"Good moves lady," he said, "but you made one miscalculation. Tell her Mike."

"I'm sorry, Lauren, it wasn't supposed to go down like this." Mike said, pointing the gun at Lauren. Her mouth dropped open in disbelief.

"Yes, Lauren," the intruder said mockingly, "lover boy here set you up. But he misjudged YOU. We never thought you'd put up a fight."

"You set me up?" Lauren said to Mike, her eyes filling with angry tears. "You know this man?"

"He's my brother," Mike said. Then he continued softly "Lauren, I thought he would just rob you all and leave. You're a nice lady, so quiet and all, I thought it would just be easy and no one would get hurt. I wouldn't have gone along with it if I thought he meant to hurt you," Mike glanced at his brother.

Lauren looked from one to the other and realized why the intruder looked familiar. He and Mike had the same short curly hair and the sensuous lips that had attracted her to Mike in the first place. Ignoring the gun in Mike's hand, Lauren strode over to him and slapped him hard across the face.

"You worm!" she hissed, "How could you betray me?" She dropped her head to her hands. She could not believe she had let herself believe that a 20-something year old could find her irresistible. Now she had betrayed her husband and even worse, her own principles. She thought of the spilled salt. Her grandma had been right; sweeping in the night was bad, bad luck.

"Mommy?" a sleepy voice came from the end of the room. All three adults snapped their heads in the direction of the voice and saw Lauren's 6 year old son standing in the entrance to the living room, rubbing his eyes with one hand and clutching a teddy bear in the other.

Lauren took advantage of the distraction and with a quick front kick she knocked the gun from Mike's hand. She dove for it and pointed it at the two men.

The little boy began to cry.

"Don't cry, darling." Lauren said as soothingly as she could with a gun in her hands. "Mommy needs you to be a really brave boy. Go to the kitchen phone and call 9-1-1 just like I taught you. Tell the police there are some bad guys in our house."

The boy ran quickly into the kitchen.

"You idiot!" the intruder exploded, "How could you let her get the gun!"

"I was an idiot to go along with this scheme in the first place," Mike replied.

"Well, you can't back out now. We are in this together, all three of us."

Mike's brother took a step towards Lauren, looking her straight in the eyes once more.

"You would never shoot us," he said, "Come on, hand me the gun and we'll leave quietly."

Lauren's voice matched his. "You misjudged me once before, don't make the mistake again."

The man took another step forward, his hand outstretched towards the gun. He jumped back as a loud noise reverberated in the room. Lauren had aimed just to the right of his leg and fired into the floor.

"I was training to enter the defence force when I met my husband. I see that Mike forgot to tell you that bit of information. Some things you don't forget. Rest assured, next time I won't miss," Lauren added.

He raised his hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay," he said to Lauren and then to his brother he said, "Mike, you would hook up with a crazy woman."

Lauren's son came back to the door. He was really crying now. "Mommy? Mommy? I called the police."

Lauren answered without taking her eyes off of the two men. "You did great, honey. Daddy will be so proud. Now go wait in your room, Mommy'll be right there."

They heard sirens in the distance.

"Wait, there, little boy," Mike's brother spoke to Lauren's son. The boy stopped, not sure what to do.

The intruder spoke to Lauren. "You won't shoot us with your son watching. Plus, if the cops get here, we'll tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, right Mike?"

"I don't care what you tell the cops," Lauren spat. "My marriage is already over."

She pointed to her son and continued, "And I won't make James lie about what he saw here tonight."

The four of them stood still for a few seconds, each contemplating their next move. Mike's brother darted suddenly in the direction of the living room door. Lauren guessed that he planned to grab James and use him as a shield from the gun.

"Don't move!" she shouted.

She aimed the gun at his arm and squeezed the trigger again. He kept moving and the bullet hit him in his chest. He stopped mid-stride and clutched his chest. His knees buckled and he dropped to the floor.

James, Lauren's son screamed as the man fell bleeding near his feet. Mike ran to his brother's side.

"Marcus!" he cried. He held his brother in his arms.

"Marcus!" he cried out again. He looked up at Lauren.

"What have you done? My God, what have you done?"

Lauren did not move. She knew she should comfort her son or try to help Mike's brother but her body would not respond to her commands. All she could do was to stand staring at the injured man with tears streaming down her cheeks.

The sound of the sirens was now much closer. Mike looked up towards the door as if he was hearing the noise for the first time. He looked down at his brother, gently closed his eyes, jumped up and ran for the door. He opened it and escaped into the bushes just as the police cars pulled up.

Lauren heard the police approaching the open door. They stepped inside and immediately took in the scene; the gun in Lauren's hands and the man lying on the ground bleeding. One of the officers pulled out his radio.

"Send over an ambulance. Gunshot victim at 623 Seabreeze Lane." She paused, then continued, "Yes, the Reverend Martin's house."

The other officer had knelt down and felt Marcus' body for a pulse. He said to his partner.

"They don't need to hurry, I think we've lost this one."

He looked up at Lauren. "Mrs. Martin, are you okay? Can you tell me what happened here?"

She shook her head, unable to speak.

The officer stood next to her and said, "Take your time and start at the beginning."

Lauren's head felt like it was spinning. The beginning? She did not know where this story really started? With Marcus' entrance into the house? Or were the seeds of this disaster planted with her first thought of deceiving her husband?

She sank slowly to her knees and hugged her son tightly to her chest. Wherever the story started, it was going to take a lot of work to get to a happy ending.
The Nutsman A Poem by K. Jared Hosein

My grandfather is a nutsman.

He owns a metal grinder

And makes nuts for people;  
Lug nuts, sleeve nuts, serrated flange nuts.  
But one time he made a human nut  
Who remains fastened to his room.  
He gets up late and watches television  
While his loud fat wife downs another glass  
And dances to the chutney rhythm outside.  
The wrenches could give him a torque  
And they could drill him with a little bit,  
But he couldn't get loose.  
He was stuck there,  
Destined to corrode,  
A new layer of rust forming  
Every time he is forced to come out and say hello.
Sourness A Poem by K. Jared Hosein

The world crawls forward  
And spouts pimples shaped like nuclear power plants  
And keloids shaped like oil spills.  
But there are some things that remain stuck in time,  
Retaining the permanence of scar tissue.

Old metal water towers with flaking red paint  
Still sitting lofty and empty  
Overlooking the asphalt roads that cut through villages  
Where everyone knows each other  
Even though they have to walk ten minutes  
To get to each other's house.

This is where time is measured by geology  
And the night shift by the flambeau,  
Seasons are named after fruit and vegetable  
And the only true sourness they know of  
Is the senescence of the papaya and the mango.
The End.....Art by Portia Subran

Dream Reader Art by Portia Subran

let bygones be bygones A Poem by Loretta Oleck

x marks the spot where the hatchet is buried-

once and for all

under the thatched roof hut

stash it flash it mash it up baby

as palms nod teasingly towards the sea

scrappy dogs roam free scampering ahead

or lagging behind as we stagger along-

their watchfulness a keen reminder

that there's a bleating heart of darkness

on this island

the sea is blue but gritty too washing up

seaweed and salt and coughed up blood

from a past where blood was bought or taken

or buried in the mangrove swamps

scrubby hills sugarcane

all those places where fire burns debris

surrounded by a gaping witness-

the mouth of sky asking

why do some have so little

while others have so much?

sullen sons silently wield machetes

in a slow skulk down a dusty road

long-legged daughters are silent too-

spiders sitting idle out front weathered shacks

painting glitter over bubblegum polish

rainbow curlers bobbing round their heads

occasionally stirring odd chicken parts

that simmer and brown on the stove all day

someone stuck a drying starfish

in the mossy palm-tree's trunk

someone raked dried leaves from the sand

early morning shadows flickered cross-hatched

on the walls of the thatched roof hut

where the hatchet is buried

let bygones be bygones

stash it flash it mash it up baby

wild island dogs curl in sleep-

now and then opening a weary eye

just to make sure all is still safe
secret shack A Poem by Loretta Oleck

hidden behind a thicket of boughs

alive with snarled vines

was a pink shack with a lopsided door-

a leaning sentry guarding rotted wood floors

and ripped curtains of tangled lace

and a broken clock's face where the hands

had stopped at half past four

snapping open a blade

I crudely carved my name above the door

then distracted by a mezuzah tilted on the frame

the blade slipped on the tail of the letter y

slashing through history and time

splicing through the door screen

slicing through my lifeline-

a bloodied omen

a ticking time bomb

scarring my palm

I had thought claiming doors

would be easy and would make me brave

I had no idea my lifeline could be altered with a blade

I had thought I was the only Jew on this island-

apparently others had found this door too
Saffron Life A Poem by Loretta Oleck

I lived a saffron life

a midnight howl

walking winding alleyways

of bustling markets

following trails past pails of scuttling

cobalt crabs and buckets of jasmine rice

into the heart of the safflower scent

I lived a saffron life plaiting my past

from spiceberry silk

a velvet widow spider

in a vacant window frame

weaving gossamer curtains

to be pulled up or down depending

upon my darkest or lightest mood

or the squall of the Caribbean wind

or the direction of the rooftop

weather vane

I followed shadows of patterned cloth

swaying like dancers holding tight

to wooden clothespins

straddling the frayed line

down a crooked path towards

arms outstretched

into the sun silk center

of the labyrinth
Diana A Poem by Clinton Van Inman

Drag your white skull before blind seas  
That tumble dazed to your mono-eyed magic.  
Go tell Neptune when the night is through.  
Charm him, too, with your waxing and waning.  
But you can't catch me with those veiled half smiles.  
Your borrowed brilliance exposes you  
As I know your darker side.  
Go charm some other star struck rhapsodist.
Sylvia A Poem by Clinton Van Inman

I hear they have placed

A pretty blue plaque

High above your flat

So that tourists can find you

And say that this is the spot

Where you killed yourself.

Lucky girl, you modern Sappho

To take the quantum leap

Like a comet to take your place

Among the darkest regions of empty space

With a brilliance that few can keep

And even less the mind to know

Where no dull planet can perturb you

As fallen flowers have no faces.
Immeasurable A Poem by Robert R. Gibson

My love is immeasurable

Like if I tried to count exactly how many grains of sand

Were on Accra Beach at 1 in the morning on Tuesday night

Or what exactly is the weight of a heart made heavy with missing you

Immeasurable like the exact distance apart lust is from like is from love on the emotional scale

Or the speed of which my heart escalates when my thoughts oscillate around you

Or the strength of concentration it takes to control the penetration of

Your mind with my words

I want to make love with my voice

Not make you feel like a used whore

Emotionally raped by a wham bam thank you ma'am conversation.

My love is immeasurable

Like the exact span of the universe I fall into when we kiss

Or exactly how many seconds I have to miss the beating of my heart

Before I have to break the link with your lips

to make sure I can continue living.

My love is immeasurable

Like the exact amount of pleasure derived from hearing your voice

After not hearing it since yesterday at 9 o'clock

Since you were too tired to stay on the phone and took an early night

Or the speed in kilometres per second of my thoughts

As they race each other across the distance between my soul to yours

Irrespective of whether you are across the world

Or laying right next to me, wrapped up in my arms.

No instruments in existence can measure the level of persistence it takes to wear down your defenses

The length of time I dug into the trenches and made war against your shyness

Took siege against your reluctance to peek out of your shell

I rejoiced like Israel when that Jericho wall fell

And I moved in to lay claim to my territory.

My love for you is immeasurable.

So just accept it -

And stop trying.
Parts one and two A Poem by Dawnell Harrison

Love is my destiny, part one.

Poetry is my honey nectar,

Part two –

Its sweetness slowly

Sliding down my chin.

I shall not live

In fear of hairy,

Cowardly monsters

That move quietly

In the dark still

Of the night planting

Injustice

In my fertile garden.
200 leis A Story by Jenille Prince

For my grandmothers: Katherine and Ruby

Aunty Lenore warned me this morning: "We have 200 leis, and it have 186 people coming! And you see who want to be greedy and ask for two, or say they want one to take home for somebody else? Don't give them, you hear? And if anybody who not on the guest list come off the road and try to get one, don't give it to them! Because they not invited! Not to my party!"

I know I look good today. Everybody keep telling me I look like Diana Ross, but I find I look even better than her! This is a special occasion! My only child just get married today, and I giving her a Hawaiian reception with a luau, leis, and everything! I get the inspiration from this travel magazine from America I see the other day, dated January 1983. The cover story was about this white actress, in her Hawaiian home! She had big blonde hair and pink press-on nails, and in the article she was saying how much she like Hawaii. Oh, and there was a picture of her at something they call a luau (they pronounce it loo-owww) with all these Hawaiians, who look kind of Chinese and Indian and Carib mix-up. And all the Hawaiians had these flowers around their necks. So when Denisha tell me she getting married, I say we going to have leis too! My new boyfriend call this fancy flower shop in Port-of-Spain, and they say they could make leis for us out of a special type of pink and white frangipani that does only grow in Hawaii. So I say alright, yes! I always like Hawaii. Gidget goes Hawaiian, Hawaii Five-O, and now Magnum P.I. Denisha deserve all this. Only the best for my child. Especially since she father Delroy not here!

I am standing outside of St. Timothy Hall in Mt. Lambert, handing out leis at my cousin Denisha's wedding. She is my first cousin on my mother's side. The red, black, and white Trinidadian flag flaps a few feet away from me, near the front wall. It is October, so it is rainy season, and there is a heavy smell of leftover rain in the air. Water is shining on the leaves of the big palm tree near the flag. From where I stand, I can see the Northern Mountain Range, wide and green, keeping watch over Northern Trinidad. I have one lei around my head and another around my neck. I don't mind the coconut shell bra and grass skirt my aunt made me wear. It is nothing more revealing than what I wore at Carnival this year, "wining" down to calypso by Arrow and Merchant. Geez, Aunty Lenore went on and on about these damn leis! I told her to get some school children to string some flowers together if she wanted leis, but she said she wanted it done professionally. Anyway, she can afford it, because her new man has money. He is this big-shot who came back to Trinidad from the States about five years ago, during the oil boom. I guess he's giving her more than Uncle Delroy ever did.

I know it sound bad, but I was glad when I hear that Delroy was trapped in Grenada. Because I wanted an excuse for not inviting him to the wedding. But aye, is just like Delroy to get trap in Grenada during the coup, eh? His family come to Trinidad when he was a little boy, forty something years ago. All that time, he never gone back to Grenada. And now the minute he decide to go back, confusion break out there! Everybody on curfew, nobody know what going to happen, and I hear they killing people. You feel that is coincidence? I sure is Delroy who cause that coup! And he ain't even here at the wedding, but people still talking about him. People coming up to me after the ceremony, wondering where Delroy is. Like they more concerned with Delroy than with the bride! Anyway, I watching Panorama every night, just to see if they have some kind of footage from Grenada of him making confusion, or leading up some junta rebel militia thing. I waiting for them to show him, with stripes paint up on his face, and one of them big Russian AK seven-forty-seven guns in his hands.

My aunt almost opted for a true Hawaiian luau experience, by having the wedding on a beach in Tobago. But then she decided on the hall instead. "The hall nice and private!" she said. "No ruffians could come off the road and start interfering in things!" I remember the first time I ever heard the word "ruffian". When Denisha and I were getting older and starting to develop, Uncle Delroy had warned us about ruffians.

The boy Denisha marrying sweet too bad! You know he mother have Chinese in her, and the father is half Portuguese. So I hope they children will have soft hair! See, now that is something that I can't even say around Delroy. That I hope the children have soft hair. If I say that to him, he would be ready to give me some big long lecture, and tell me I don't like how black people look, and how I only like black people when they don't look too black! But that kind of talk is something he pick up when he was living away, you know. All them black power thing he pick up in England and the States. And in spite of all that, he give he last child a Russian name! No black power name like Jamal, or Kwame, or Makandal! Instead, he call him Yuri!

I liked Uncle Delroy, and I still miss him. He used to come and visit us sometimes when we were little, usually on the weekends. I remember one time when Denisha and I were kids, we were outside with him picking mangoes. We picked two mangoes from the lowest branch, because it was all we could reach. But Uncle Delroy told us not to eat those mangoes, because they were not the best ones. He walked around the tree, studying it. Then he pulled at one of the higher branches, until it came down to his eye level. He plucked two dark yellow mangoes with red and black smudges. Then he wiped and peeled them with a little knife he carried about, and gave them to us.

Delroy would have real problems with this wedding. I could hear him now, lecturing me, in that stupid high-pitch voice he does use when he pretending to be joking but he really serious. He would probably say "What wrong with a normal Trinidad wedding? Whoever hear of people wasting flowers to put around people neck, at a Trinidad wedding?" Oh, and he would laugh that stupid laugh, and he would ask me something ridiculous, like if I think this is some type of cruise ship. You see, that is why we couldn't live together. Delroy did not like nice things like I did. He did not want to better himself, like I did. All the years he spend in England and then the States, and he ain't even come back with a bit of refinement. You think he try to do something big when he come back to Trinidad, like be a school principal or politician? No! All he do was sit outside in the evenings, drinking puncheon rum, and laughing loud-loud with low-class people.

It would have been nice if Uncle Delroy were here, to make a father-of-the-bride speech. I liked his voice. One time when I was eight, our family went to Mayaro Beach for the day. Uncle Delroy asked Denisha and me what we were learning in school. We told him we had learnt a poem, and a happy expression came over his face when we told him what it was. "I must go down to the sea!" he exclaimed. "I remember that!" And then he recited the whole poem by heart. He had not heard it since he was a little boy, but he still remembered all the words. He made the poem sound so real, almost as if he had wrote it himself. Uncle Delroy was not a big man, but he had a rough, deep voice — even deeper than some other men's. It was not fine-sounding, like those people on the radio and TV. But it was clear and strong. And it always had a bit of a laugh to it.

When I first met Delroy, he had just come back from England. It was the same year that Trinidad get independence. He had been studying law in London. Anyway, to make a long story short, Denisha was born the next year. But he and I used to fall out, so he did move out and was living in Siparia. We used to see him sometimes. He would come and spend the weekend, and make sure Denisha was doing well in school. But when she was ten, he went to the States. He say he was going there to make money to send back for us. But then he come back to Trinidad a few years later, and take up with a woman in Rio Claro, and have this Yuri. I didn't even know when he come back to Trinidad. He was hiding from me, because he didn't want me to know he was back. He even used to go and visit Denisha in school, instead of coming to the house. But I bounce him up one day and he had to acknowledge me! I call out "Aye, Delroy!" so everybody could hear, and he was forced to turn around and talk to me. I tell him "I hear you have a son, and his name is Yuri. What kind of name is that?" and he say "Yuri is a unique name, and nobody else here have it. Trinidad don't need any more Errols, Dexters, or Lesters!"

Denisha has been bright since we were little. She usually placed in the top three after each term test, when we were in primary school. But one term, she came sixth. She bawled when she gave Uncle Delroy her report book to sign. But he was not mad. Instead, he hugged her, and told her that he knew that she would come first next time. Then she told him that she did not like school and did not want to go anymore. Uncle Delroy shook his head. He was not vexed, but he was firm. "Don't ever say that you don't like school," he told her. "When my mother was little, she had to leave school when she was ten, because she had to help her mother with the other children. She cried when she found out she could not go back to school!" He said that Denisha and I were lucky, because we could go to school for as long as we wanted.

Denisha have a good job as an elementary school teacher. Last year she went to Margarita Island for shopping with her friends. She can buy nice things for herself. She have three pairs of them fancy strappy shoes with heels, tight jeans like the ones Brooke Shields does wear, jerseys that say "Flashdance", roller skates, nice makeup, records, and two pieces of real jewellery. And her man buy her a nice little car, and she tell me she will take me anywhere I want and I don't have to fight up with taxis. We have all of that, and we didn't need Delroy to give it to us.

I give a lei to my aunt's friend, Miss Powell. "All you start serving food yet?" asks Miss Powell, who stares at her lei with suspicion. She looks as if she is about to eat it. "No, Miss Powell," I say. "But we have appetizers!" I point to some of my cousins, who are walking around with trays. "What they serving?" asks Miss Powell. "It looks kind of small!" I tell her that the trays contain cheese-and-pineapple sticks, beef pies, and special snails from Hawaii. "Too bad Delroy didn't cook the food at this wedding!" says Mrs. Lum-Lock, who is standing behind Miss Powell. "I couldn't make my Sunday dinner without the pepper sauce and green seasoning Delroy used to make for me!" Miss Powell nods and turns around. "Aye Marguerite! Is true, you know! Delroy could really cook! And he roti? Indian people and all used to beg Delroy to make roti for them, and they are the ones who invent roti!" Mrs. Lum-Lock nods.

One Saturday night after evening mass, we came home and saw Delroy outside. I hadn't seen him for a couple months, but he was there that night, slumped down on one of the white chairs in the gallery. He was just staring at the ground. "Good evening Uncle Delroy!" my niece say, and "Good evening Daddy!" Denisha say. He just ignore them, even when they went up to hug him. They ask me what was wrong with him. I told them that he was haunted, and they should just leave him alone. Then we went in and closed the door, and leave him outside. When I get up the next morning, he was gone.

Here is Miss Fanny Singh, Denisha's teacher from primary school. Here are the Josephs, Uncle Delroy's cousins who live in America. Here is Mr. Walker, a school principal in Point Fortin, who takes his lei and says "Delroy is my good friend, yes!" Here is Dr. Daly, a red-skinned doctor from San Fernando, who takes his lei and says "Delroy is my good friend, yes!" Here is Father Figaro, a priest from Arima now living in Princes Town, who takes his lei and says "Delroy is my good friend, yes!" Here is Mr. Pope, the man who built my aunt's house, who takes his lei and says "Delroy is my good friend, yes!"

Denisha do well despite him! Her hair was neat when she went to school, comb up and cane-row nice. And her shoes were always white, and her uniform was always neat. And she do well in school too! I have to give Delroy credit for that! Because is he brains she get for sure. But unlike him, she do something constructive with her brains, instead of wasting them!

I like weddings TOO BAD! That is why I get married three times! But Delroy conspicuous by his ABSENCE, as they say! I don't agree with marriage– women never HAPPY and with them you can't do right FOR DOING WRONG! Why Denisha had to rush-rush to get married? She PREGNANT? Because I find that she put on some size when I see her in the church, you know? She will make some nice-looking children — they will have NICE HAIR! I like that LIONEL RICHIE song. That girl succeed DESPITE she father, yes! Is true that Delroy in GRENADA? Maybe is just as well he ain't here! WHY WE HAVE TO WEAR THESE FLOWERS? I know somebody who see him in Grenada. Delroy is my GOOD FRIEND. That MAN is like a BROTHER to me! Delroy is something else! He should have been here to give his DAUGHTER away. I had to catch a taxi from quite Siparia for this wedding and I hungry too bad! Where the bride? SHE STILL TAKING PICTURES?

There are now only two leis left. However, there are still fifteen unchecked names on the guest list, so I am puzzled as to where all the leis have gone. I suspect Miss Powell. A vagrant is now walking towards me, with a big smile and squinted eyes. His dreadlocks graze his shoulders, and he is wearing old-looking jeans, a jersey that says BWIA (and then in italics British West Indies Airways, and then in quotes "You're the reason we fly!"), and a pair of yellow rubber slippers. I want to turn him away, but I think it is best to be polite. I ask him his name, and he says "Lester X!" He then laughs. His eyes rest briefly on my coconut shell bra in a disapproving way, then he peers over my shoulder to try and see what is going on inside. "I'm sorry sir, but I don't see any Lester X on the list," I tell him. This seems to confuse him. But then he tilts his head upwards and raises his eyebrows, as if he has just remembered something important. He apologizes: "Oh sorry, I was walking by, and I hear some music and see some people dressed up fancy and going in, so I decide to follow them." I tell him, in my most serious voice, that only people on the guest list are allowed in the reception. He says "Don't worry. I ain't staying long!" I open my mouth to protest, but then he grabs the two remaining leis and walks into the hall.

I am afraid to stop him, because even though I am now grown up, I still want to show respect. Yes, it is Uncle Delroy. He is smart, so he probably knows that I was only pretending not to recognize him. As he heads into the main area where everyone is gathered, I hear him shout out to my aunt: "Lenore, you having a party and you ain't invite me? But that ain't right!"
Dreams and Reality A Story by Latoya Wakefield

I loved when my mother told us stories...She would move her hands wildly about when she was telling the exciting parts. She would open her already big eyes wide when she thought we would be surprised. She would laugh when we asked insightful questions.

'Dis yah generation smart eeh' she would say to her partner. I loved to hear her laugh, it was pleasantly boisterous. I would rush from school on Friday evenings, do my homework and all the other chores that I had to before Mummy came home.

My older sister would run a boat (cook) as Mum told her that every woman should know her duties in the house. My sister was almost 13 yrs old at that time. Everything would be done by the time mom got home just so that she could tell us stories, sometimes she would bring us Finga and twist doughnuts as treats from the bakery she worked.

My brother would rub her feet and then she would begin 'Mi did tell unnu about di time when duppy pinch daddy?' We all laughed.

'No mummy, duppies aren't real' I would say eloquently. My mother hated when I spoke Patois at all. She said I was her only child who had the brains to keep straight.as.and I should always practice English so that I could get one of those fancy Bank Teller jobs. She was confident that with my 'propa English' and my 'high colour' I would land that job as soon as I finished high school.

'Who tell yu dat?' Mummy asked with one raised eyebrow.

'Teacha' I replied then revamped and said 'Teacher'

'Oh ok, well teacheeerrrr nuh always right' She stressed.

'Ok mum, why did duppy pinched daddy?' I said to avoid making a scene in front of my brothers and sisters. I didn't want to be isolated later when we're playing Dolly house. They always said I acted like 'mi better dan di fabily (family)'

'Well him madda always tell 'im to not sleep on the ground. One night he drop asleep dey and something sting him. Wen mommy look at it, she see that he had a dark spot on his shoulder'

'ooohhh' we said.

'A scorpion cudda bite 'im' my brother who was 14 years old knew everything about these things.

'Yu right enuh, Delroy but daddy imself said to mommy dat him madda always tell 'im not to sleep on di floor and she woul' pinch him hard wen 'im do so'

'But Grampa's mother wasn't alive when he was grown....' I stopped, getting the relevance of that point. 'Oh' I simply said.

'So yu get it? Daddy madda was the duppy dat pinch 'im. So yu see even afta yu madda gone, yu shoul' still neva disobey har' that scared us all.

Did duppies really exist? I thought when Mummy finished telling that story. Would mummy haunt me after she died? I shuddered; I never should have thought that. Please forgive me, God. I momentarily closed my eyes and said a short prayer. Mummy always said I have goat's mouth....

Mummy continued with her stories. Soon she started with the lighter stories of her past with her brothers then she would tell us a couple Anansi stories and that always cracked us up. I especially adored the one with Brother Anansi and Brother Dog.

Stories weren't the only good part of our lives, at least to me. I lived in a 4 bedroom, one inside, one outside bathroom, verandah, living room that also double as a dining room zinc house with my mother, grandparents, 1 brother , 2 sisters and 3 cousins. We had back space that was big enough to hold a mango tree that we would raid every mango season (nothing like pepper pots after school when the adults weren't home to stop us), a sestion (an outside washing area), several clothing lines and a habitat for four mongrel dogs, Rex, Spotty (who was afraid of clappass), our beloved Anna (who was murdered by a dog hater several years) and Teeca (my favourite dog in the whole wide world).

We also had a front yard that was big enough for us to have a family game of dandy shandy, red-light, Chinese skip, ride bicycles when we weren't allow on the streets, to dance to the road's music and to keep birthday parties which the neighbours' kids all attended whether or not they were invited.

Life was good to me. School was always a joy to attend. The teachers loved me. I was placed number 1 in my grade 2 and 3 classes in primary school. All 100s except for one simple mistake I made on the Science paper that earned me a 98%. I was a bit upset at myself for that. Nonetheless, my enthusiasm for learning grew. I would do extra homework. I would do the after school lessons even though I didn't need it. I would borrow big girls' books from my older friends and feed my mind with literature. My hobbies weren't adoring cute boys and dressing up. I had real hobbies like reading, writing, speaking French, sketching among many others.

Why did you think I did so well? Many would say to get out of the ghetto, to gain upward mobility, to be successful. Well, at that time life wasn't a struggle. I was, hard to believe it now, happy. I did it all because it felt good and it made the greatest person in my life proud, my mother.

*****

I heard screaming in the other room. It must be a bad dream from watching Freddie. I heard the scream again this time muffled. I tried to get up but could hardly move. I felt something heavy on me. It was my darn brother's long legs around my abdomen and my smaller sister's hand over my chest. They slept so badly and this twin size makeshift bed did nothing to help the situation. I tried to remove my brother's legs without waking him. He got so cranky when I did. My sister was a deep sleeper so I could throw her hands anywhere and not worry.

I looked over the other bed too see if the others were ok. The lamp provided just enough light to see the outlines of bodies I knew so well. I saw my cousin and big sister but I didn't see the biggest shape. I looked around, where was she? I thought.

I got off the bed and sat on the cold floor which was comforting compared to the warmth I was just coming from. I waited a few minutes, still no sign of her. Probably she's doing the Kaka (a French word I learnt from one of my teachers). I heard a strange sound. I followed the sound that led to the almost dark verandah. I stopped, held my breath in case I alerted the thief. I looked around for a machete, my grandmother always kept them near then I heard a familiar voice.

'Yu think yu can get whey from mi gal?' he said roughly. Wasn't that...?

'Di pickney dem inna di next room' she pleaded

'If dem brite, mek dem come out yah' he said.

'Wha kinda yah fadda yu be' she said with a grasp. So it was Daddy, haven't seen him in so long. Not that I cared, Daddy, Raymond as I rudely called him (What's wrong with calling him by his first name?) was never nice to me.

I heard a sound that sounded like a slap.

' Yu dey pon coke again don't?' she barely said 'Dats di only time yu hit mi'

'Shut up and jus tek it, it nah hurt if yu nuh struggle plus yu nuh wann wake up di pickney dem' Tears pricked at my own eyes. I wish I could save her. I remember those exact sounds he made several years ago when I was sleeping with them. I was so glad when she left him. He was such a bastard.

Some minutes later I heard a zipper being zipped. I walked as quickly as I could to the space between my brother and sister. I heard mom made a sound as if she was trying to prevent nasal fluids and probably drying her eyes too. I turned my back and stared at the wall. Life was good until he came around.

At the crow of the rooster, I got up to do some housework before it was time for school. Mom was already in the kitchen preparing our breakfast. I heard grandpa and grandma talking low on the verandah.

'It really mek him dat strong fi open out the grill like that' grandma said. I peeked around to see that two pegs of the grill were expanded so that someone could pass through.

'Wait till mi rass catch him' my grandpa said.

'Dat bwoy cud be anyway by now. How wi a go fix dis?'

'Him know sey wi sleep inna di back room, Brooks' my grandpa said, ready to investigate how it happened without them knowing.

I walked away before they saw me, backed into my room to grab our Bible from the dresser. Grandma always told me to read my Bible before I started my day as God would protect us better if we praised Him first. Today I praised him to protect my mother.

As soon as I finished praying, my brother came to me. He had to get up early too to catch the bus to his technical high school.

'A tru sey daddy come here last nite?' he asked me, they always took me for a news reporter.

'Daddy to you, sperm donor to me' I said with venom.

'Pickney hurry up and get ready before yu late fi school' Mummy came in and hurried us to get ready. Normally I would smile at her unnecessary bickering as I didn't have school until two hours time. We only really got us this early to help her with the morning chores.

I looked at her with a straight mouth and walk away. How could she act like last night didn't happen?

The days didn't change even though mummy's partners did. Short &amp; sweet I heard she told her friend once when she wondered why she ended it with Paul. Life still remained happy living in that zinc house on Fenton's road. Soon we got a TV that showed us black and white images and mother's stories would be replaced with TV eventually. Mum didn't mind as long as we were contended.

In 1991, mom was pregnant. At that time I was 16, my sister 18 and my brother 19. My brother was doing well for himself by owning and operating his own community barbershop. I was in my last year of Ardenne High, one of the most prestigious schools in Kingston, Jamaica. My grandparents bragged all the time about their bright spark granddaughter.

During the last 3 years, I learned a lot about the bad side of life. My uncle that had to run away because he dissed the local Don, my oldest sister being 'adopted' by my mother from my mother's friend because her mother would have kicked her out if she found out. She was fat so no one knew but my mother that she was pregnant so they had a woman who knew what she was doing perform the delivery. My mother's friend never got better after that. When my period came, my grandmother finally admitted that babies didn't drop from the sky and warned me if I ever get pregnant, she would disown me as her granddaughter.

Now my mother is pregnant and she cries every day. I didn't know why. Her job was lenient, told her she could get maternity leave without pay. I thought that was unfair, I've read articles of women entitled to maternity leave with pay.

'At least mi still 'ave mi job after' she said sadly.

'But!' I started

'Child, if you cann change di system yu go along wid it' she said. I shut up, now was not the time to be stubborn.

'So why are you crying?' I probed. I got closer to my mother since my puberty years. She would confide her deepest secrets to me and it aided me in being mature and stayed away from guys who only wanted one thing. I'm glad I thought kissing was gross.

'It's not!' my best friend would say whenever the topic was brought up. She loves kissing her boyfriend. I always hoped it would stay at kissing for her, she was so giddy headed at times.

'It is, how does one enjoy exchanging saliva? Didn't our Biology teacher told you that our mouths are one of the germiestest places in the world! Ewww'

'There's no such word as 'germiestest'. It feels just magical connecting with someone you love like that.'

'As a future journalist, I have the creative license to make words up. You need to stop reading 'Mills &amp; Boons', you think of life as if it's some sort of fairytale'

'You have to try it to know it'

'And you, my friend, has to stop saying you 'love' every boy that you're only in a relationship for no more than a month' I scoffed and walked away. When girls talked like that, they annoyed me.

Back to mom; she didn't answer at first so I went for the softer route.

'Mum, I'm worried. What's wrong?' I asked gently.

'Mi don't wann dis baby' she answered with her eyes cast down 'But killin' it would be an unforgivable sin'

I sighed. 'Why don't you want to have the baby?' I had no idea how she got pregnant but she can't be that naïve as not to know to use protection. My English teacher, Ms. McDolly's words came to me "if you've done the deed then you must face the consequences."

'Because...memba mi tell yu how babies mek'

'Yes' I remembered, school made it much clearer though.

'Well, memba di word 'consent'? I smiled, my mother always tried to use Proper words for my sake. I thought about the meaning of that word. Consent meant you have to agree to the act itself.

'Yes' I replied, now afraid of what she'll say.

'Yu fadda did dat to mi without 'consent' she said and started to cry.

'He raped you?' That bastard...that piece of Kaka! I shouted in my head.

She couldn't say. Soon she revealed the details of what happened. It was a late night after work. He came out of nowhere and held on to her hand. She tried to push him off but the drugs made him super strong. He dragged her into a dark spot and took her there. She screamed for help but no one came to help her. I listened and tried not to be emotional. I hugged her when she finished telling the story.

'Everything will be ok mum. Don't worry' we both knew everything wouldn't be ok. My sister had her child a year aback; we only had four working adults that had to provide for 10 mouths. Now we'll have three working adults to provide for 11 mouths.

'I applied for that bank teller job' I lied to make her smile.

'Yu did?' she looked up at me. That stopped her tears. I didn't. I had plans to go to school aboard, my teacher helped me applied for them and scholarships. She was sure I would get at least one. I had an impeccable manuscript. She already secured a sponsor for my plane fare and part tuition. I wasn't going to tell my mum until I was sure my plans could be acted on. Now it made no sense.

'Yes mum, I did so you don't have to worry' I would take some secretarial courses in the summer I thought, already drafting my new plan. My dreams will have to wait, I thought to myself when I was alone. I will stand by mother like she stood by me.
Sweet Hand A Story by Vashti Bowlah

She was known as the lady with the sweet hand, the lady who could make the best fudge and sugarcake in the whole of Cedar Village. Everyone lovingly called her Tantie Mona. The students of Cedar Village Primary School gathered around her every morning, recess and lunchtime to purchase her homemade sweets. Even Miss Jennifer, the standard one teacher could not resist.

"You should make and sell these outside of school so everybody could enjoy them, they're so delicious!" said Miss Jennifer, sinking her teeth into the grated coconut delicacy. "When I tried your recipe, my sugarcakes didn't turn out anything like this and my husband made fun of me. He said our kids could use them to play cricket or skooch."

"Just keep trying until you get it right and he go stop laughing. You think I learn just so? Is plenty times I try before they come out good, and is years and years now I making them."

Tantie Mona noticed the young girl from Miss Jennifer's class. She had bought five cents' worth of mango amchar earlier to have with her quarter sada roti for lunch. She stopped by the other vendor and bought a pack of candy cigarettes. Three boys followed behind her, the one holding the cricket bat tugged at the white ribbons adorning her two ponytails on either side of her head, giggling as they ran off. The bell rang just then to signal the end of the lunch break. Girls in their blue pleated skirts and white shirts abandoned their games of hopscotch and moral, while boys with their dirt-stained shirts and khaki pants ran from the playing field towards their classrooms.

"Once.you.keep making them, I wouldn't have to try again." Miss Jennifer laughed, turning her attention to the young girl who had now stopped at Tantie Mona's table. "Hurry up Annie, time for class."

Tantie Mona wrapped the last sugarcake in a piece of brown paper, after shaking the glass jar to ensure she got all the extra bits and pieces. The girl sneezed and Tantie Mona handed her a napkin to wipe her nose. Annie sneezed again as she gave Tantie Mona her coin, her face lighting up as she slipped the sugarcake into her side pocket and hurried off.

Now that everyone had returned to their classrooms, Tantie Mona attended to the items on her small wooden table which was covered with a piece of white plastic printed with bouquets of red roses. She removed the remaining biscuits and confectionery from the glass display case and wiped the two inside shelves with a damp cloth. She noticed some stains on the outer top corner and rubbed the area in a circular motion until they disappeared. She tightened all the lids and wiped the glass jars which held favourites like preserved mangoes, salt prunes, lollipops and tamarind balls. She wrapped a few tamarind seeds in a piece of paper to give to a student who was saving them to make a bean bag to play with her friends. She then draped a white mosquito net she had altered to cover everything on the table until the sound of the next bell signaled the end of the school day. That's when she would make her final day's sales and return home.

Tantie Mona took the plastic container out of the brown paper bag she kept nearby and moved her wooden stool closer to the building to rest her back against the wall. She felt Mrs. Jankie's stare piercing through her while she ate her lunch. Only two vendors were permitted on the school's compound, one on each end of the side wall closer to the main entrance. Tantie Mona had been vending at Cedar Village Primary School for the past twelve years after losing her husband. They were going to Metro cinema at Harris Promenade on their twenty-first anniversary to see a new Indian movie starring Dharmendra and Hema Malini, and were knocked down by an oncoming vehicle that ran off the road and onto the pavement. She had suffered a broken leg, but he never made it.

Mrs. Jankie started vending only a year ago after the previous vendor died of a sudden heart attack. Tantie Mona had become very good friends with Mrs. Foster since they had met on that first day of the school term over a decade ago. Mrs. Foster was only seven years older and never complained about any kind of illness before. Tantie Mona was very sad when she heard that she had passed away at the tender age of fifty-eight.

"I see you had a busy day as usual," remarked Mrs. Jankie, lifting her voice while refilling a jar with candy cigarettes.

"It wasn't too bad," replied Tantie Mona, "and for you too I sure,"

"Nah, them children and them only like to buy from you," was her reply.

Tantie Mona never grew as close to Mrs. Jankie as she had been with Mrs. Foster. All she knew from their brief conversations was that she was forty-nine years old with six children, and belonged to the far end of the village. Her husband dropped her to school in a blue Cortina and returned for her at the end of the school day. Mrs. Jankie always asked where she bought her sweets and how much she paid for them. When she told her that she made most of them, she asked if she could taste her hand, reaching into her jars without waiting for permission.

Tantie Mona always liked to try something new much to the children's delight, and Mrs. Jankie always followed. One Friday she made coconut ice-block and Mrs. Jankie did the same, when she sold the lollipops with chewing gum in the center she also did the same, and when Tantie Mona started selling Wonder Bags with a surprise toy inside, so did she. Tantie Mona planned on bringing a jar of pickled green plums the next day as a Friday treat. She had monitored the plums in her back yard until they were just right and had picked them herself two days ago with a bamboo rod.

Her pickled green plums were a hit the next day. The children had spread the word by recess and all were sold out. She promised the other kids that she would bring another jar the next week as well as a jar of pickled green pommecythere which she knew they would enjoy just as much.

Shortly after the lunch break while classes were in session, Tantie Mona caught a glimpse of Miss Jennifer helping little Annie into her Datsun 120Y and driving out of the school compound in a hurry. She wondered whether Annie was okay because she was holding her tummy.

Mrs. Jankie appeared in front of her. "I hear Annie was feeling sick since she eat your plums this morning. I wonder if she get gastro."

"My plums? Gastro?" Tantie Mona was confused. "You sure? Because I don't understand. I does take extra care when I making anything to sell and does always keep everything clean."

"Well I just saying what I hear because that is a serious thing, so I don't know what the principal go do about it."

"But plenty children buy plums today, and how come nobody else get sick?"

Mrs. Jankie paused, then replied, "Just because we didn't hear nothing don't mean that nobody else get sick. But I did hear some children saying how two boys was vomiting in the back of the school so you never know what go happen by later."

Tantie Mona lowered her head and pressed her fingers to her eyes, her vision blurred by a fine mist of tears. "I selling here for so long and nothing like this ever happen. I could never live with myself if any of them children get sick because of me."

"Me mehself, that is why I don't make all kinda thing and bring from home because I don't want nobody children to get sick. But don't worry, we go just have to wait and find out what happen."

Tantie Mona thought about it some more and a weak smile began on the corners of her lips. She rose from her stool and asked Mrs. Jankie to keep an eye on her table.

"Where...where you going? What you going and do?" she threw after her, but Tantie Mona did not look back.

She proceeded to the front of the building, gripping the rails as she climbed the flight of stairs one step at a time, pausing at regular intervals to rest her legs and catch her breath. She eventually reached the top and looked around for the principal's office, suddenly realizing it was the first time she had ever climbed those stairs. The secretary met her at the doorway and informed her that the principal had left to attend a meeting and would not be back for the rest of the day, but she could meet her on Monday. A disappointed Tantie Mona thanked her and navigated her way to the bottom of the stairs. All the while she was engulfed with a deep feeling of guilt and confusion over what had happened to Annie.

The final bell rang and within minutes children were pouring out of their classrooms, but there was still no sign of Miss Jennifer or Annie by the time she had packed up to leave. No one else seemed to know anything.

Tantie Mona did not return to school on Monday. The next evening, she walked through the village to meet Mrs. Foster's grandson so she could inquire about Annie, but since they were not in the same class, all he could say was that he saw her in school that day and she seemed okay. It was enough to bring some relief to Tantie Mona but after careful thought, she decided it was best not to continue vending at the school.

Three weeks had gone by when Tantie Mona heard the sound of a car horn just after noon and looked through her kitchen window to see a car pulling into her dirt yard. She recognized Miss Jennifer's Datsun and saw that the principal was also exiting from the passenger's seat. Several thoughts danced around in her mind. Was Annie really okay? Had any other children fallen ill? Were they now investigating her? Tantie Mona prepared for the worst. The two women were now approaching her front door so she put on a brave face. She greeted them still wearing her apron and head tie, accompanied with a warm smile.

"We are so glad to find you home." Miss Jennifer looked her up and down. "Are we disturbing you from something?"

"All yuh always welcome by me." She held the door open, inviting them in with a sweep of her hand. "But excuse the place eh, it real messy. All yuh sit down here and I coming back just now, I going and take off the stove."

She returned to the living room a few minutes later with a glass of mauby in each hand, minus her apron. "It homemade." She placed the glasses on the center table before sinking into the seat opposite them. "I surprise to see all yuh here, everything okay?"

"We came to see if you were okay because we haven't seen you for a while. We even dropped by last week and you weren't home so we were worried."

Tantie Mona lowered her eyes. "I feeI real bad after what happen to Annie so I say it was better if I don't go back."

"Annie? What happened?" Miss Jennifer's eyes darted from Tantie Mona to the principal, wearing a look of concern.

"I thought that is what all yuh come for."

"No, so you'll have to explain," said Miss Jennifer.

"You can't remember the last Friday when I was in school and Annie get sick when she eat the plums I did bring to sell?"

The principal leaned closer. "It's the first time we're hearing this. But, is that why you didn't come back? The secretary said you came to the office to see me that day and she told you to come back on Monday, but you never came."

"Well I see when Miss Jennifer was taking Annie to the health center and..."

Miss Jennifer held up both palms in front of her. "Okay, you need to start at the beginning so we could make some sense of this."

Tantie Mona explained everything that happened that day and how devastated she was. She confessed that she didn't go back because she was worried about what they would think of her after she had been selling at the school for so many years.

Miss Jennifer rose and sat next to her, extending an arm around her shoulder. She went on to explain that Annie started vomiting so she had to rush her home, but it had nothing to do with her plums. Annie's mother told her that she wanted to keep her from school that day because she was coming down with the flu, but she didn't want to miss the art and craft project they were doing in class. She guessed that Mrs. Jankie must have used the opportunity to her advantage knowing what a kind and trusting woman she was.

"We're sorry you went through all of this without telling us anything," said the principal.

"I even asked Mrs. Jankie if you had mentioned anything to her and she said you had some personal stuff to take care of," added Miss Jennifer.

Tantie Mona was crushed that Mrs. Jankie had misled her so easily and could not imagine why she would have done so. She had even offered her a lift home that afternoon when her husband had come to pick her up.

"Now that we've cleared all this up, we hope you'll come back because we're not the only ones who miss you and your sweets," said Miss Jennifer. "My entire class demanded that we bring you back, so it might cause a riot if you don't."

Tantie Mona went on to explain that she just started selling her sweets at the weekend market, and a few parlour and shop owners in the area have also offered to sell them. She was surprised to receive some repeat orders which is what she was preparing in her kitchen. Her granddaughter has been helping her after school to parcel the fudge, sugarcake and nuts cake and stick on the Tantie Mona's Sweet Hand labels on them. "She say it go look more official," she gave a toothy grin. "But is Miss Jennifer I have to thank for that idea."

"I told you they were the best!" Miss Jennifer was pleased.

"We're happy for you, but we really would like you to come back." The principal gave a supportive smile. "The final decision is yours, so you could think about it if you like."

Tantie Mona didn't have to give it much further thought after reading the disappointment in their faces. "You know what? I go have plenty time to make my sweets after school and still sell in the market on weekends, so I go come back from the week after this one when I buy up a few things."

Their relief was evident.

She returned to school early that Monday morning to the exact spot where she had spent the last twelve years. She cleaned and packed her display case and filled her glass jars with homemade sweets and a variety of snacks. She could hardly wait to see the excitement in the children's faces when they saw the new Bubblegum Trading Cards with pictures of their favourite stars. She save three for Annie with Bionic Woman, Charlie's Angels and The Patridge Family, because she was always talking about those TV shows. A short distance from her was a woman who appeared to be her own age and she was setting up a vending table and display case filled with goodies. The woman waved to her with a warm, welcoming smile; a smile which reminded Tantie Mona of a very dear friend.
Thief in the Village A Story by Patricia Whittle

We were accustomed to staying outside late at nights, and whenever Mama was going to the shop or to visit a neighbour she never locked the door. She would just close it. Now all this changed. Things would never be the same in our little village.

Little clues continued to crop up, but at first we did not take them seriously. Miss May missed her bag of salt and a few other small items from the kitchen, but concluded that her head must be running, and she might have dumped them by mistake.

Miss Hermin missed her Mortar stick and swore that Mass Sam Must have hidden it to spite her and Mass Egbert couldn't find one of his Dutch pots.

Then one morning when I was at school, Yvette, my friend, called me out of class.

"Your mother is at the school gate," she said. "Ask teacher to let you out."

I held up my two fingers to form a V and Miss A, my teacher, allowed me to leave the class. Mama was at the gate waiting for me. I was surprised to see her in her yard clothes.

"Thief broke into the house and ransack everything," she said. "I am going to the police station to report it. Go back to yuh class."

She left, and I stood watching her as she hurried down the hill. I could not concentrate on anything else for the rest of the day. I had two shilling and six pence tied up in a white sock and I kept wondering if the thief stole that too. I had saved up for a long time to buy ice cream and light cake and grater cake at the school harvest. I could hardly wait for lunch time to come.

As the bell rang I dashed home and bored my way through the crowd that was milling around at my gate. The door of the house was still open and the house was ransacked from top to bottom. Clothes, furniture, even food was scattered on the floor. The trunks of clothes and bed spread were capsized and the ward robe was left ajar. All the drawers were pulled out. I got the impression that the thief was searching for something in particular.

The police came and took statement, but it took a long time before the crowd dispersed.

When they were all gone we cleared the things off the floor and tidied back our house. I was happy to find the sock with my money. The thief did not find it. However he took our radio, Papa's watch and some pound notes that Mama kept in the machine drawer. He also took some of Papa's clothes, and all the food we had in the house. I was so mad, I wanted to catch him and send him to jail.

The search for the thief started. People started combing the hills for evidence of his hide out. That thief was smart. He wouldn't even light a fire, so they could detect where he was.

Doors were locked early at nights, and we were warned to stay away from the hills. Papa and the other men made sure to keep a well sharpened machete in the house, and the slightest noise alerted them at nights. To be frank, everybody was on edge.

Then one evening as I reached the square, I knew something was afoot. There was a large crowd and a lot of noise. As I came nearer I realized that they had a prisoner in their midst. He was a chubby black man. He badly needed to be trimmed and shaved. His face was greasy and he was awfully dirty and haggard. They were beating and kicking him. His hands were tied with a rope and all he was doing was grunting. I felt sorry for him.

Soon the police drove up in a jeep. They praised the people for catching the thief. I watched as they opened the back of the jeep to take him away. One held his feet that were tied and the other held him under his two arms.

"One two three," they counted and threw him into the van on the count of three.

Long after they were gone the people still stood in the square, talking about the thief. It was the first I had seen a real convict up close. I was glad they caught him, but deep inside I felt sorry for him. They had beaten him badly and then they just threw him into the jeep. That picture stayed inside my head for days.

After this incident things changed in the village. Everyone became more cautious, and Mama never left her door open again when she was going to the shop.
Walk Too Fast, Walk Two Time A Poem by Patricia Whittle

If you walk too fass you walk two time

Dis proverb prove true eight time outa nine

For nuff smaddy weh palawash dem job

Soon realize dat a dem own time dem rob

Now Miss Mavis inna one big rush

An no hab time fi put on di final touch

Shi was baking bullas fi sell

Someting shi could do very well.

But tedday shi wake up late

An shi hurry up an bake

So dat shi could reach by five

Wen har customers would arrive

Well of course shi reach in time

But shi neva meck a dime

For afta one smaddy taste di cake

Im seh it give im bellyache

So Miss Mavis lose har sale

An har cake stay till dem stale

Afta dat shi haffi teck great pain

Fi bake good cake fi sell again
Helper A Poem by Patricia Whittle

Housewuck a sinting weh never done

Yu wuck roun di clock an no hab no fun

So if yu hab a job plus a husban

Yu fi try an get a helper if yu can.

Now Valerie live eena one hellova house

So yu expect har fi hab a helper of course

Shi hab three pickney an a full time job

An add to dat shi hab a husban name Bob.

Everytime mi si Valerie, shi too busy

Shi even complain seh har head often dizzy

Shi doan even hab time fi talk pon di phone

Shi seh all di wuck lan pon she alone.

One day mi jus get upset wid har

So mi gi har a piece a mi mine sar

Mi sey, "A full time yu tap gwan like idiot Valerie?

Yu hab pickney an husban an yu still unhappy.

Yu wuck out yu soul case bout yu a cut an carve

If yu hire a helper unnu not gwine starve

Wi hab plenty poor people who waan fi live

Hire one meck God bless yu, fi wat yu give.

Wen yu pay di little wages, it nah done yu money

But wen yu overwuck an get sick, it won't bi funny

For it sad wen yu rich an yet yu nuh healthy

But a joy if yu healthy, tho yu nuh suh wealthy.
Julie Mango A Poem by Vanessa Simmons

Miss Julie

a perfect handful

to contend with,

always playing hard

to get,

How is the air up there

Miss Julie?

Don't worry

because I will know

when you are ready

for me,

that slow blush

spreading like the dawn

over young skin.

I will come for you

and steal you away

behind their backs

Miss Julie

I will savor your wild

tropical scent

of heat and savage rain

and be your first

carnivorous love

of sweet pulp and

warm sticky punch.

And then Miss Julie

I will take you home

to breed for me

an infinite feast

of little Julies.
Mr. Brown A Poem by Vanessa Simmons

Mr. Brown don't step foot

on my porch no more,

no more comments on the heat

and how nice I lookin'

and what I doin' standing all the way

over there for

and if he could please

get a glass of water,

how I making him hot and thirsty so

(wink)

but I know in truth

it must be the heat.

Mr. Brown used to visit my porch

at night

with the light turn' off,

there use' to be a lap

between the chair and

my backside,

and warm hands 'round my waist.

Mr. Brown would kiss me

on the dark porch

when the moon was hiding

so nobody could see.

Mr. Brown don't step foot

on my porch no more,

I suspect is because of

Mrs. Brown.
The Grand Master of Time (v1) Art by Barbara Sandiford

The Grand Master of Time (v2) Art by Barbara Sandiford

Sweet Slavery Art by Barbara Sandiford

Rainy Season A Poem by Sarah Venable

In the rhythm of the seasons

when the music of the planet

is in tune with June's fat moon,

what's the melody you hear

if you take the time to listen?

The recurring refrain of the rain.

Though the sky may be duller,

the wetness brings out colour

here below,

and makes things glisten

if you take the time to look.

And the moisture is a balm

that bestows a sort of calm

and splendid generation

to all creatures here below,

a caressing penetration

that provides for things to grow.

The skin becomes more supple

the frogs come out and couple

while in darkness, shy fungus

proliferates among us.

Mildew plots insurgence

under every sink and cranny.

Laundry on the line stays clammy.

Light holds in diffusion,

Dampness in suffusion,

And photos stored in boxes

Undergo a fusion, needing

peeling from their wads.

We are forced to change our sunshine ways

beneath this sky that sheds itself

in a soft cloak of rain,

while thick air beckons us

to just go back to bed and sleep for days.
Transport of the Word A Poem by Sarah Venable

Kamau, Kamau, Kamau

Speaks in his measured pace

From word to word,

The upright, steady pole

at the centre of the whirl.

His mind flings out leaping

Stones in a stream.

Stream becomes river

Deep and wide

Need to fly to the other side

And we do,

transported

on wings

of images freely

associating

Sipping dipping

elisions flow

collisions go

Whup! Upside your head

And knock you from streaming

Into conscious wonder.

I wonder how

his raptor vision soars

spotting landmarks

in the panorama of events

then chooses the words;

How what he sees is heard,

How he paints behind our eyes

How some strokes feather,

cut or blur.

His choices are

De liberate,

though sometimes baffling.

But this quibble

is anchovy tango.

(See what I mean?)

The arc remains.

He stands at the lectern

humbly but erect

his forearm sweeping,

round and round

like a coucou stick

stirring the pot of poem

dishing it steaming

into our open beaks,

making arcs over the page.

He does not so much read,

as transmit.

And – What's this? – I see an aura.

It can't be so;

I am not one of those

who does. I blink and

the glow remains

curving over the man

tracing circles

in the spotlight.

Through the darkened hall of bodies

I hear his voice in my pores.

\-- on the occasion of hearing Kamau Brathwaite reading"Arc" at Frank Collymore Hall
**Man Called Raven** Art by Glenn Johnson

Homes for the Inde A Story by Glenn Johnson

Claude Heldt was engrossed in reading a report on the status of housing for his Dzil Ligia Si'an Ndee. He unconsciously stroked his groomed brown beard, same color as his collar length hair. His long sleeved shirt was rolled up at the sleeves with a silver bolo tie finishing it off. The report had been ordered a year ago in 1966 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for all federally recognized American Indian reservations. The results were not pretty; in fact, for all tribes it was appalling. Embarrassingly, his reservation was among the worst of the worst. As the Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent of the White Mountain Apache reservation, he knew they would blame no one but him—the buck stopped on his desk. The fact that his reservation was grossly underfunded for housing projects was of no consideration to the government's powers to be. They needed to blame someone, so Claude and his fellow reservation superintendents were tagged it.

Looming large in Claude's mind was the option of resigning and letting some other sucker take on the inescapable political heat. Vying with that option was Claude's love for his job of working with the Dzil Ligia Si'an Ndee, and their beautiful reservation in the alpine region of Arizona. Over his 8 years as the reservation Superintendent, he had grown to greatly respect the tribal pride in their ferociously defended customs and traditions. Claude reminisced how it had taken three years to gain the Inde's trust. They were a very proud people who preferred their own company. He had learned that mistrust was imbedded in their history as a warrior society which was still a source of great pride. It was not lost on the Inde that their not so distant war chiefs, Geronimo and Cochise, were the greatest warriors in the Southwest. For years, Geronimo and Cochise had run the U.S military forces around in circles through some of the most unforgiving terrain in the Southwestern United States. They had driven the Army crazy; not hard to do because the Inde believed they were crazy in the first place. It was not until 1886 with the capture of Geronimo that the American Indian wars ended in the West.

Part of Claude's effort to win over his charges was to call them by their traditional name: Inde—meaning person of the band. The name Apache was not Inde. The historians he read concluded it came from the Yavapai word "pace" that translated to "enemy." In his reading about American Indian tribes, Claude found it fascinating that the vast number of traditional tribal names, when translated, meant the same thing:"The People" and then words that described their land; thus Dzil Ligia Si'an Ndee—People of the White Mountains.

Claude slumped, over resting his forehead on his desk. He was overwhelmed, as he often was, as to how to help these people. He felt immensely responsible—who else was going to do anything? Housing was rotten, no jobs, Show Low's businesses hours away as if that made any difference anyway because few of them could afford cars, reservation wide electricity and phone services were decades away. He was at a dead end with job development already used funding from the 1956 Adult Indian Vocational Training Act. No more government jobs to train for that didn't require a college degree. Even with the HUD funds available for building homes, it was slow going because construction crews were hard to find that would live out in the boonies for months on end. Claude's brain started to percolate. Housing construction and job training kept bobbing around in his head. They started to drift closer and closer together. "I've got it!" he yelled as he jumped up out of his seat. The answer was now clear as day. He would use the Vocational Training Act funds to teach Inde men to learn all of the construction skills needed to build their own homes. And HUD funds would pay for their salaries and for all the building materials once they were ready to start working. He knew that combining the two programs had never been done before by the BIA; but he was sure he could get it approved as a demonstration project.

Claude started immediately, and happily spent the next two days researching both programs and writing as tight a proposal as possible. He wanted to insure approval and funding. When it was finished, he personally drove the two hundred miles to Show Low's post office, and posted it overnight express to BIA headquarters in Washington D.C. Now the excruciating part: waiting to hear back. One week went by. The second week passed, and finally Claude received a letter from D.C. He tore it open. His heart sunk, not all the way, but a ways. Headquarters wanted to know what accounting procedures would be in place to prevent comingling of funds. Claude thought that he could kick himself for not covering that in his proposal. Finances were not his best suit. "Shoot," he said to himself, "Should have run it by Phil in the accounting department." Claude raced over to Phil's office and gave him the office copy of the proposal and the letter from headquarters. Phil looked at Claude. Looked at the proposal and said, "Hmmm. "Homes for the Apaches." Not all that catchy but it does get to the point. I'll read it over next couple of days so I know what I'm talking about." Claude was very anxious to get the proposal back to D.C., but he greatly respected Phil's expertise, and knew he was going about it the right way. "Phil, this is top priority. Drop everything else. My goal is to send it off to D.C. in three days. Do able?" Phil skimmed through the proposal, and then looked up at Claude. "You got it boss. Oh, yeah, for what it's worth--great idea." Claude smiled proudly and headed back to his office.

Again, he personally delivered the revised proposal to the post office in Show Low. Popular stories had it that Show Low got its name from a poker game in the late 1800s. The future land of Show Low was put on the table as a last chance bet. The winner made a show low bet and won--the name stuck. On the drive back, Claude had the windows open taking in the sweet smell of the Douglas Firs. He thought about how the Apache reservation was not the permanent traditional home of the Western Apache. Like many tribes they followed the migration of game with quickly built temporary shelters. But the Inde were not just hunters, they were raiders, to the great consternation—putting it mildly—of Spanish and then American settlements all over the southern region. Just the word Apache struck fear into many a non-Indian and equally Indian's of other tribes. Their swift and devastating hit and run guerilla tactics were the stuff of legend to this day.

Waiting for the response from D.C., had Claude constantly on edge; it was hard to do even his routine duties. Finally, he got the call from Show Low that he had a certified letter with a BIA D.C. return address. Good thing there were rarely any state troopers in this isolated area of Arizona because he was 15 mile over the speed limit all the way to Show Low. He rushed into the post office, and nervously tapped on the counter—the clerk just could not move fast enough. As soon as he was handed the letter, he tore it open. "Hallelujah," he yelled. His idea was approved. He was proud, but also thankfully optimistic that this was going to be a major game changer for his Inde. Jobs. Housing. What a coupe. He drove the speed limit back to his office relieved, but also excited and anxious to get started.

He jumped out of his government car. Rushed into the building and yelled, "We got it. We got it." Pats on the back and congratulations made his heart swell. Claude had decided that he would not talk about the construction of reservation homes because he did not want to overwhelm the trainees. First things first, and the training was first. He went straight to the office of his Tribal Relations Representative, Chesly Goseyun, who was Inde and fluent in both Inde and English. Of even greater significance, was that he was a member of the chieftain clan, and the current chief was his uncle. Claude had tried to learn the Inde language from Chesly who was very patient, but the Inde language was beyond daunting. Being indigenous to what was called America, the Inde language, like all American Indian languages, had absolutely no Greek or Latin derivates to hang your hat on, much less give you any clue to even begin to recognize a single word. Chesly said, "This money will help many families. I will go now to my uncle and tell him you request to meet with him. He is busy so you may need to wait." Claude responded, "Please tell the chief I will be honored to meet him when he can." Chesly put on his black cowboy hat, and walked out wearing his blue jeans and signature leather knee high moccasins. He had no choice, but to be patient. His being the superintendent meant very little to the Inde. This was their land. They were a sovereign Nation with their own self-determined government, laws, courts, and police--all characteristic of a sovereign nation. The Dzil Ligia Si' were citizens of two nations: their own and the United States of America. They, like other members of American Indian tribes, had served with distinction in every war of the modern era. In World Wars I and World war II they were segregated into American Indian only divisions; the same as African Americans. Actually, this was just fine with most American Indians because they preferred to have a fellow Indian warrior by their side. The difference between them and other soldiers was that they were not fighting for the U.S. government; they were fighting to protect their own tribal lands. If the U.S. fell, their tribes fell.

After two weeks, Chesly told Claude that Chief Manza would meet with him. Claude traveled deep into the reservation to the Chief's home. They had met but a handful of times at Tribal functions. Claude gently knocked on the weathered wooden door. Chief Manza opened the door and motioned for Claude to come in. Claude said, "yaa' ta' sai' an Inde greeting that Chesly had taught him. The chief motioned for Claude to come in and sit in an antique oak chair. The Chief sat in another wooden chair of a different design. Claude was a bit surprised because he had fantasized sitting cross legged on the floor. Adjusting to the reality of the sitting arrangement, Claude spoke about the weather, and the many elk that the Inde were harvesting—his words—not theirs. Chesley had explained that it was rude to immediately talk about business. After twenty minutes of pleasantries, Claude asked if he could talk about the construction training program. Chief Manza nodded. So Claude explained how this training would pay in construction skills for 25 Inde men. Claude stuck to his plan to reveal the whole project in stages with home building as the last stage to be revealed. The Chief approved the training and thanked Claude for providing jobs for Inde men.

As soon as Claude got back to his office, he called a meeting of his staff and ordered them all, except for administrative staff to drop all they were doing and spread out over assigned heads of families in every nook and cranny of the reservation, spreading the word of the paid construction training jobs. He gave two months for the word to spread and men to come in and apply. One hundred men applied for the training positions. Claude narrowed down the applicants with the criteria of selecting those with the highest level of education because there were manuals to be read. This dropped the list to 35. Claude interviewed all 35, and selected the25, promising the other 10 that they would be on the top of the list if he got another project approved. Much more difficult was finding a trainer who was experienced in all of the skills of construction, and had the potential to be able to teach those skills in a manner appropriate for the Inde men. The proposal had anticipated that long commutes would be a serious impediment to hiring, so the proposal provided for a generous sized trailer that would be situated next to the BIA building providing for plumbing, heat, and cooling. But there was still the isolation in a community where you were in the minority of an unfamiliar culture; it was a lot to ask. And the salary was nothing to brag about. The position was advertised in the Show Low and Parker community newspapers. Only two men applied. Both had the required broad construction experience, but one of the men was a man about 60 years old, and the other 40. Claude found the 40 year old very gung-ho; he had been a sergeant in the Marines, and had served in Viet Nam. He had the great likelihood of offending and alienating the trainees with his military authority attitude. Inde warriors were not going to take orders from a Whiteman—no different than their warrior ancestors. The older man had much in his favor. He had forty years of construction experience and was very easy going. He spoke calmly and knowledgeably in common terms about teaching construction skills. Plus, just the fact that he was an elder, non-Indian or not, the Inde respected the elderly. Claude gladly hired the older man, Michael O'Brien, who went by Mike. He was asked if he could start in two weeks, and he said he could. Actually, commuting was going to be the hardship of the trainees. Not only were they from all areas of the huge Dzil Lagia Si'an Nde reservation, but only three of them had vehicles. Few Inde had vehicles—a luxury few Inde could afford. The vehicle owners, all pickup trucks, could give rides to the trainees close to them or on the way to the training site. Mileage reimbursement was built into the proposal. The remaining eleven were picked up by a BIA van operated by a paid Inde driver who knew the dirt vast stretch of the reservations dirt roads.

The van started picking up trainees at 4:00 in the morning to arrive at the training site at 8:00 a.m. There was no complaining about the commute by a single one of the trainees; they were used to long drives to get just about everywhere. Still, the trainees were paid the same minimum wage for their travel time. Claude had thought of everything to be fair to all of the trainees; he just could not do anything about the travel time.

The one year of training was kept on schedule, thanks to the excellent organizational skills of Mike. Plus, the trainees proved to be eager and quick learners which should not have been a surprise to Claude. He felt a bit ashamed that he had at first had lingering a lingering concern as to how timely the Inde men would take to the training. The training got off to very successful start. He thought, happily, that he had been very wrong. These Inde men were going to make this project a smashing success, and it was his revolutionary idea. He would raise the reservations standing in the housing statistics.

Claude was amazed how fast the training had gone. Not a single Inde did not finish the training. A testament to their dedication and high level of aptitude. Now it was time to introduce the next step of the project to the trainees, the first construction of one of the trainee's home. Claude organized an awards ceremony for the Inde trainees, their families, and the reservation community. Each Inde of the project received a certificate and the gift of an Inde woven burden basket. All of the awards given, Claude was now ready to announce the next phase of the project—the building of the first Inde trainees home. Claude explained it all in great detail, especially how their pay would be greatly increased to maximum HUD wages. And to make it fair, there would be a lottery to decide which family would win the first home. Since this was a Friday, construction on the first home would start on the following Monday. Mike would now become construction foreman. Speech finished. Claude asked if there were any questions. Not only were there no questions, there was a pervasive silence. Claude puzzled over the silence, but since there were no questions, he closed the ceremony, once again praising the Inde men. Walking back to his office the silence nagged at him, but he concluded that the likely feeling of being overwhelmed had occurred anyway even with his doing it step by step. He relieved his discomfort with his trust in Mike and the excellent training the Inde men had received and to which they had excelled. Once the Inde construction workers adjusted to applying their skill, they would be just fine. Claude decided he would ask Mike to go especially slow at first, insuring a successful adjustment.

Claude had a hard time sleeping over the weekend, because of his great excitement about Monday's momentous event. His excitement had a head start a week before when the cement pad for the home was poured and prepared with the plumbing pipes sticking out. Claude thought: we are ready to roll. Monday arrived none too soon for Claude. The start of construction time was 8:00 a.m. Both Claude and Mike were there at 7:00 a.m. They were pleased to see that Inde women were already there with a fire close to coals for cooking breakfast for their men. Claude admired the community participation. He kept checking his watch until it ticked away 7:30. Claude was getting more and more excited; he couldn't even say a word to Mike. His excitement left him speechless. He kept checking his watch until the hands were straight up at 8:00 a.m. Soon it was 8:30 a.m., with no sign of the Inde construction workers. Claude was becoming more and more worried. He wondered if there had been an accident. But he quickly ruled that out, because they were coming in more than one vehicle. When 9:00 a.m. rolled around, Claude turned to Mike and asked, "Did they know that today was the day?" "Sure boss. I couldn't have made it any clearer," Mike answered. At 9:30 a.m., Claude was beside himself. He feared his prized project was going right down the toilet. He looked over at the Inde women who were now eating breakfast with no care in the world. Claude did not know what else to do, so he walked over to the women and out of respect asked the elder Inde woman, "Where are your men? They were supposed to be here at 8:00 a.m. What happened?" The elder was quiet for a few minutes and then said, "Don't you know? Inde men never build the home, it is woman's work. An Inde man would be shamed to do women's work."
Father's Day A Story by Simon Dolcy

"Red or blue?"

He asked himself while staring into the bathroom mirror. A simple enough decision but he finds that he cannot make it. Not alone at least. Celia was in the next room. She would gladly have been willing to make the choice for him but no, this is his decision, he thinks. It has always been his choice. So he stands in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at his reflection, as he runs the options through his head. He stares at himself. He does not see a thirty five year old man, with slight traces of gray in his hair and age lines beginning to etch themselves, like words in a book, across his face. Instead he sees the image of his father. That alone makes him want to turn away from his reflection but he remains, steadfast, trying to make up his mind - to make a choice.

"Red or Blue?"

Finally, he settles on the blue. His father would have liked the blue tie. As a matter of fact; his father would have liked to have seen him in any tie at all - period. He still remembers the arguments they had had. About his future, his choices, his direction in life. His father had been so angry at him, so disappointed. Even though he had made up his mind that college was not where he wanted to be, he still felt something akin to embarrassment and shame when his father's eyes ever met his.

"Jamal, you look nice"

Celia had walked into the bathroom without him noticing and his stray thoughts jumbled back on to the vivid reality of this moment. She was leaning on the door jam with her arms folded. Her hazel eyes looked up at him with those usual orbs of appreciation that he had fallen in love with; one of the two good things in his life that he appreciated above all others. Her eyes were mixed with a slight twinge of concern.

"Here let me help..." she offered. She moved towards him and adjusts his tie. She glances tentatively up at him as she undoes, realigns and finally ties it for him.

"Are you sure you don't need me to come with you?" she asks.

Not the first time she had asked this question but even though she knew the answer had not changed she still pushed the query anyway. That's what wives do. Say things that a man knows and carries within himself but doesn't have the strength to say.

"No, I will be ok alone but...thanks." Jamal responds with a smile

She accepts the lie that he provides without a fuss, smiles and heads back into the kitchen. If he was truly honest with himself, he would have wanted her by his side, each step of the way. He finishes dressing himself, heads towards the door, passing the living room where his beautiful three year old daughter was playing. She was playing with her favorite doll and barely noticed him standing there, watching her. She looks up at him and flashes a broad pearly white smile. He glances at his watch. He knows he has to go but he stoops down in front of her and asks her what she is doing. "I am playing "house" with Marley" she says as she continues to enjoy her favorite doll. This was the second thing that he was proud of- his daughter, Neasha. His pride was staring up at him with the brightest smile he had ever seen. His precious angel that had both his wife's eyes and her radiant smile; a smile that was so open and warm, he couldn't help but return it in kind. He kisses her on her forehead, instructs her to be good and heads out the door.

He walks into the warm sun. It is a beautiful day with clear, blue skies that stretched on as far as your imagination. It was indeed a great day but strangely it brought his mind back to the last time he had seen his father. It had been around ten years ago. He was still living at his parents' house instead of his three bedroom home in West Terrace with his wife and child. Living with his parents had been difficult. From the time he was aware of himself he wanted to write. His father had not, to say the least, been pleased with his choice while his mother on the other hand did not openly condone or oppose his decision. She was the Switzerland in this constant tug of war that seemed to define his relationship with his dad.

"So you are going to a camp for three years...?" There was a tone of disbelief in his father's voice as he said that. As if he could not believe that this is what anyone that sprang from his loins would even be capable of stating this to him much less they having an opinion beyond what he placed down as law.

"No Dad, it is a three year overseas creative writing residency, I have told you this about 100 times." Jamal replied, trying not to allow himself to sound frustrated but he had mentioned what he had wanted to do several times to his father in the last month or so. Now that he had received his letter of acceptance it was all but confirmed - he was going.

"So this how you plan to waste your life?!?! By becoming some dead beat....artist?!?!" He spat out that last word like it was something dirty that he did not want to have remain on his tongue a second more than necessary.

"Why can't' you be more like you sister? At least she is not trying to make me go to meh grave before muh time." His father prided himself on how well he spoke but whenever he got extremely angry, you could always hear his tell tale bajan accent come pouring out in his speech. His father was referring to the fact that his younger sister, Monet, (younger by about two years), had decided to pursue her career in business studies which had made his father nearly beam with joy. She was already on her third year, pursuing her bachelor degree and had full intentions to continue on to do her masters.

"Everyone is not cut from the same clothe as you, dad. I am not interested in running your business after you have relinquished your throne. It's not my intention or my dream. I want to be a writer, is that so bad??" Jamal replied.

His father had started his garment factory from virtually nothing and it had grown to be one of the biggest suppliers of uniforms and clothing materials in the island. It is this that had insured his children had the best that he could offer – from the impressive roof that they were now arguing under to the best in education possible. He loved to state to anyone who was willing to listen, that he planned to pass on his empire to his children. It was a shame that all his children did not share that same sentiment.

"So you want to become a bum?!? Some kind of dead beat vagabond that will amount to nothing?!?! I will not stand for it!!! Not while you live under my roof!!!" His father roared.

And that was the end of that. His father was no longer interested in hearing anything but his own voice and it was a waste of both time and energy to even attempt to continue this one sided argument but Jamal's mind had been made up. He was going to go in spite of how his father felt. He just didn't know how he was going to do it quite yet. The tuition fee alone was fifteen thousand dollars so the hopes of ever pursuing his dream without the financial support of his father were now slim to near impossible. A couple days later his mother had approached him alone in his room and given him a check with the much needed funds of twenty thousand dollars etched across the dotted line. She never told him how she had acquired the money but had simply winked at him with a mischievous smile on her lips, told him to ignore his bull headed father and go follow where his heart leads. So, on a clouded Tuesday afternoon, two weeks later he was accompanied to the airport by his mother and his sister. His father had not spoken to him since their explosive argument. They passed each other like ghosts in the hallways of the house he had called home for the last twenty five years. They did not even maintain eye contact if it could be avoided. His father had chosen not to see him off at the airport even though his mother had pleaded with him in vain to do so but as a man with pride he would remain adamant in his mindset.

Jamal's mind flashed back to the present and to the reason why he wanted to see his father today. He jumped into his car and drove off into the radiant calm of a nice sunny Sunday afternoon. A copy of his book entitled "Life and other Mishaps" neatly wrapped in brown paper and banded by white flailed string, tucked in the passenger's seat next to him. The drive to his father would take about forty five minutes, so he allowed his mind to ramble again just to allow some time to pass. His thoughts wandered to the time when he had heard the news.

Jamal had been overseas for two years now and it was going well with his studies. He was not the best in his class or the most brilliant but his tutor recognized his commitment and his vivid imagination that tended to leap at you from ever story Jamal wrote. It was the best two years of his life. One day he was called to the administration office to receive a call from home. The rooms that the students occupied were not equipped with phones so most students had personal cell phones if they wished to keep in touch with family or friends. Jamal had no need for one. He spoke to his mother every weekend since his arrival, just to check up on her and every once in a while he asked about his father as well who still remained stubborn in his ways and refused to take up the line to even say a courteous hello to his prodigal son. It was a Wednesday so he was quite shocked to receive a call from mother. She sounded distraught and sobbed bitterly between each word.

It was his father.

He had collapsed at work. His mother had warned him to start to cut back on those long hours and to try to get some rest but he would not hear of it. "Who would run the company?" he said. "It can't run itself, especially since there is no one here to help me" he said. All these things his mother told him in a quivering voice and he listened intently to each word. She told him that the doctors believed it was a combination of his long hours and his ailing heart but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

"I don't know what to do. I...I am a complete and utter wreck right now. I need you right now Jamal. I think it's time you came home" she said.

Jamal was on the next available flight to Barbados, hoping beyond hope he would make it back to see his father. Thinking of all the things he would tell him and share with him as he recovered from this set back.

It was too late.

At the funeral he didn't cry. He didn't allow himself to. As he stood there dressed in all black, holding his mothers trembling and suddenly feeble hands, he set in his mind that he had to be strong, not only for his mother and sister but also for his father. He would not have wanted to have seen his son wallowing in tears but instead he would have wanted him to be the back bone that his family needed right now. So, that is what he would be even now as the dark sky opened up and blessed them with a downpour of warm rain that blended perfectly with a salty taste that trickled down his cheeks.

His mother had become a shell of the vibrant, robust woman he had known. He had stayed with her a couple weeks to ensure that she would be fine. It was during this time on a strangely cold spring evening, while sitting in the family room with her, that she shared some more insight into his father's passing.

"He loved you, you know" she said, still sipping from the cupped mug of warm vanilla flavoured coffee that she loved to drink every evening. It always seemed to perk her up and her eyes didn't seem as sad and haunted after she had finished.

"Did he now?" Jamal responded sarcastically, not looking up from the book he had been reading.

"He did and he was also very proud of you as well. He just couldn't...say it" his mother continued, shifting herself on the couch so she could turn and face him.

Jamal placed the book down on the coffee table and with a sigh, turned and faced his mother. Her dark eyes were intense and did not shift from his and at this time he saw the woman he had being calling mother all these years come alive again.

"How did you think that I got the money to pay for your tuition? He made me swear not to tell you but honestly, I am sure you knew that despite my resourcefulness, I did not have that kind of money just lying around."

Jamal knew. Maybe not before she had actually said it out loud but deep down in some unspoken place he had known what she was telling him was true.

"I want you to go back and study and not give up" she said.

"I planned to go back but just wanted to make sure you were fine first." Jamal replied.

"You know that wasn't true. You were planning on staying here with this tired old woman and forget all about your dreams. You wanted to do what you thought your father would have wanted but he wouldn't want this. "

Jamal looked at her in astonishment, shocked that she had read his mind so well. He had actually considered just forgetting about the writing and taking over the company. His family needed him more than ever and even now, he still felt this need to please his father, especially beyond the grave. But the news that his father had approved changed things. Gave him a new perspective, so he took his mother's advice and headed back to New York to finish what he had started - his sacrifice produced fruit. He moved back home and started to work on his first novel. The first couple years were not easy but he managed to survive and was taken up by one publishing company that dealt with Caribbean literature and saw talent in his work. It was surprisingly successful, well at least to him, and he was able to build his first home and marry his girlfriend Celia, who was pregnant with their first child, Neasha.

He pulled into the gravel filled dusty lane that led to his father's final resting place. This being the first time he had been here the since the funeral three years ago. As he walked towards his dad's memorial with the book tucked securely under his arm, he noticed all the graves that had been overrun by weeds, grass and time; some gravestones even falling to ruin from neglect and poor maintenance. His family had insured that would never happen to his father's grave. They had placed that extra bit of money needed to ensure that a caretaker would clear any debris from the area, all year round. The grave stone had the legend engraved -

"A man of few words that moved mountains with his actions".

Jamal could not think of a more appropriate phrase to describe his father and how he had lived his life. The idea of mortality hung heavily on Jamal's head. If the choices he had made were right and if he had found favour in his father's eyes were important questions to him that played on his mind. He felt the ghost of his father hanging around this place like an unspoken question.

"I always wanted you be proud of me, Dad, and to look at me not just as some bum but a man; a man that could stand on your level and walk the path that would not have left me alone in your shadow. Your boots were too big for me to walk in, so I decided to follow my own path. It's not what you wanted, I know, but it was the only thing I could do. I brought my book for you to see. I did it and I would like to believe that you helped me write these words as well. But...my greatest regret is not that you were my father but that...I wasn't a good enough son. Happy Father's day, Dad"

He rested the book carefully on the tombstone and turned away. The light of the afternoon sun shone brightly and warmly on his skin. He felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders; that some great burden had been taken away. He felt light, warm and for the first time in a long while - free.
I Want to Go Back A Poem by Tracey-Ann Wisdom

(For Ena Mae Attride)

I want to go back

to the time when you were here,

when life made sense and I was embraced by, enveloped in

the thick blue blanket

that was your love.

I want to go back

to the feeling of not knowing

and not caring because you

were my rock, my stay;

to once again hear

those three little words -

"Yu a grow."

I want to go back in time

and ask you to stay

because you never explained

what that meant

and now I am grown

but still don't understand.

I want to go back

to your arms

on those inky, moonless nights

that you'd illuminate with your lamp

and anoint me with your words

and stories of "ol time."

I want to go back

with you so I could know you

as you were then,

so young and full of life;

to dance with you in your "floor shows"

and maybe understand

the woman you would become.

I want to go back

but I can't.

You left me so suddenly,

so cruelly and painfully.

My life went down the drain.

I want to get it back.

I wish I could go back...

to that first week of high school

Just one moment was all it'd take

to save myself from this endless heartache.

Show you my new feathers,

get your approval to fly.

Above all, I'd just wanted to see your face,

let you know

I love you,

maybe say

good-bye.
Reflection A Poem by Kade Anthony Walker

Then... as I stood over the water I saw her face. The one I love but could not have, the one I dreamed of but could not touch. My fingers made streaks in the water as the only thing I wanted was to touch her beautiful face, but she faded slowly; I was left alone.

In an instant I was left to realize how empty I now felt. The many dreams I have had about her seem so real and whenever I found myself around her I was convinced that one day she would be mine. As my tears fell into the water, her reflection revealed itself once more but this time she was not alone.

I was forced to look at her in the presence of another doing all the things I so long dreamed about. My tears were not enough to vanish these images and neither were these stones that only sank. I refused to accept that which was true, so without pride in my heart I took my own sight; no longer will I see that which has hurt me.
Licks carnt dun! A Poem by Andrea Olivia Ottley

Have you ever dance de maskerade wid out de beat a de drum?

Well leh mi tell yoh dis

I learn to dance dhat tune

From licks carnt dun!

Have you ever jump skipping rope widout de rope?

Man I learn to jump skipping rope

From licks carnt dun!

Have you ever seen stars and it ain't night yet?

I seen plenty a stars in de galaxy

From licks carnt dun!

Mi a tell yoh when Marmie a gi licks

Pickny gat to run...

"Fowl waa sleep pon roost no hard to get cetch!"

Dem words ain't no fun.

Mi swear all part a me garn

Mi jump up like mi walk in a stinging ants

Mi riggle and scratch,

Mi root like a pig

Mi scrabble like a fowl

Mi wail like howlin win

Mi bawl like rainfall

Just because...

Licks carnt Dun!
Heathrow Internatinal immigration 2007 A Poem by Malika Booker

When she hear say dem haffi go back,

Charlene start feel like dark night,

She drop so much style pon she friend dem

back a yard, now dem ago laugh afta her.

yet it never sink in, till she start see people beg

and sob. It bruk her heart fi see the two pickney dem

a hug up, ah look like poor ting inna di corna.

Fi her stomach drop till it meet her big toe,

mek her fall braps pon concrete floor and bawl.

One smart dress ooman start hiss inna posh voice,

Get up, get up, have you no shame.

If she never feel so bad she woulda box her down.

One pleat skirt granny, pull her up, tell her

fe stop cry, tru God know's best.

How she did want to spit in God's eye that day!

Wha God know bout shame and sacrifice?

Lord Gad, all di money spend pon Visa gone,

dem nah even gi her back di flight money.
Sweet Liquor A Poem by Malika Booker

Left right, left right in the Government boots, the Government boots

I see them boots, boots, boots and more boots

On the feet of young trigger-happy recruits – The Mighty Gabby.

girl, if you see thing! the way they does pile in here when fete

door bus open on saturday nights. pour in like animals. looking

sweet too bad. girl if you see the way they does parade and carry

on. how i does close meh eyes and lean back on them hard bodies

and wine. i know some of them real good. the way they move.

how they handle women bodies. the way they does roll they hip.

girl you have to know them tings, so when a man come jam

behind you, you could know if is friend or foe without turning

round and looking up in he face. Or in case the place too dark to

make out the face. you know if to walk off or stay there. girl I

even know they faces real good but never look in they eyes.

if you see the way they does hold on to rum bottles like is com-

munion. like is holy. like is they saviour. the way they does crawl

all up inside hard liquor. girl, if you see them wring out johnny

walker bottle. squeeze every drop. knock back wray and nephew

just like real beast riding they soul.

girl, to see sweet young ting hurt so bad does make pain bus open meh

belly. when they play that destra song that say, everybody everybody

bounce somebody, bounce somebody, girl, if you see ting! a host of

unruly joy. them man does tek over the dancefloor and smash

they bodies, flesh hitting flesh, jumping and hollering like the

army evict them. like them bodies have nuff sin to wuk out they

system. last night ashley tell me he name call and he going over

there soon. girl and when he tell me dat I mek the mistake of

looking he in he eyes. if you see them eyes! i frighten men with

eyes dead so. like all the love wring out of them. i does wonder

what the hell them see so, make sadness line they eyes like

cataract. oh lord, girl, what I see in he eyes mek meh own eye

spring water. He so young eh. baby still in he chin. and he standing

there body lean to one side, squeezing the bottle neck. choking it

nah backfoot! girl, what I could say eh! stupid tie up meh tongue,

so I jus hold onto he all night. sweet he up with meh body,

and pile he ass with more liquor.
Death March A Poem by G. Newton Chance

On concrete slab

round table,

outside rumshop,

served cold

to country

on platter

like John's

to Herodias,

a la carte

Columbian cartel style,

a head,

severed,

separated from shell,

left lying lifeless, abandoned,

in abandoned canefield,

bitter harvest

of deluded quest for sugar

of quick material gains.

Karma comes round

on the wheel of misfortune

in a hostile game of hustle

in a hostel named California.

I stand at the window,

on the outside peering in,

on the inside peering out.

Belafonte's yellow bird has flown

its paradisal tropic island nest.

Gone the sweet and tender bird calls

of our innocence.

There is nothing left but silence

of secret ops

(and cover ups by crooked cops),

and the melody

of a symphony, a sympathy,

for the Devil and a bedevilled nation.

The marching band of death is playing loudly

but death marchers have forgotten

how to march.
Contributors Notes

Graham Bannister is a member of the group "League of Extraordinary Poets " (LXP) in Barbados, where he also engages as a Spoken Word artist. He has been recognized with a 2012 NIFCA award for his prose.

Malika Booker is a British writer of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage. Her poems are widely published in anthologies and journals including: Out of Bounds, Black & Asian Poets (Bloodaxe 2012) Ten New Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) the India International Journal 2005, and Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women's Poetry (The Women's Press, 1998). She has represented British writing internationally, both independently and with the British Council including Slovenia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Russia. In Spring 2005 she was sponsored by the Arts Council England for a three-month writer fellowship at the India International Centre in Delhi. She has also written for the stage and radio. Her one-woman show Unplanned, toured nationwide throughout 2007. Her collection Breadfruit was published by flippedeye in 2008, and recommended by the Poetry Book Society. She was the first Poet in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company and her collection Pepperseed is forthcoming from Peepal Tree Press in 2013.

Vashti Bowlah is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago and a participant of The 2008 UWI/Cropper Foundation Creative Writers' Residential Workshop. Her short stories and articles have appeared in various publications including St. Petersburg Review, The Caribbean Writer, Poui, WomanSpeak Journal, Signifyin' Guyana (Caribbean Women Writers Series), Tongues of the Ocean and St. Somewhere Journal. She was a short listed nominee for the 2013 Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize.

G. Newton V. Chance was born in Tobago. He is a member of the Writers Union of Trinidad and Tobago and the Trinidad Poetry Workshop; attended Eastern Caribbean Institute of Agriculture and Forestry and works closely with nature as a Forester. Hobbies include playing wind instruments, building computers, reading and writing poetry. Believes the power of a song is its ability to evoke emotions by marrying lyric and music but that music without lyric can be just as powerful, lyric without music can be just as powerful, there is music in lyric and lyric can be simple yet profound. In this age of computers, would like to model lines after simple, efficient code and, analogous to object oriented programming, achieve most of the imagery from nouns and verbs, avoiding the bloat and excess of unnecessary adjectives.

Cher Corbin is a mother of two, a scientist and a silver award winner in Photography at the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA). In 2011, she received two silver medals in Literary Arts in NIFCA for her prose pieces, "Intervention" and "The Pink Slip". In 2012, she won NIFCA awards for her writing and in the Fine Arts category for her watercolour, "Bridge at the Hole". Cher is presently working on two novellas, Silvered Mirrors and The Pink Slip.

Simon Dolcy is a proud son of Barbadian soil. In 2011, he entered his first ever NIFCA (National Independence Festival of the Creative Arts) competition and won a silver medal for Adult Prose. The same story, "The Windowsill", was also published in the online magazine Bajan Sun Online.

Robert R. Gibson is a member of the League of Extraordinary Poets (LXP) in Barbados and enjoys painting sensual images with his words, leading his audience into a sensory experience. In 2011, Robert entered the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA) with three poems – Luscious, Rain, and Goblet. Luscious received a silver award, and Goblet and Rain received bronze awards. He also received the Most Promising Poet award for the year. In 2012, Robert entered NIFCA again and one of his poems – Tribute – received a bronze award. He maintains a personal blog called Passion's Pleasure.

Dawnell Harrison has been published in over 65 magazines and journals including The Endicott Review, Fowl Feathered Review, The Bitchin' Kitsch, Vox Poetica, Abbey, Iconoclast, Puckerbrush Review, Nerve Cowboy, Mobius, and many others. She has also had 3 books of poetry published; Voyager, The Maverick Posse, and The Fire Behind My Eyes.

Kevin Jared Hosein is a writer and artist born and raised in the Caribbean island state Trinidad and Tobago. He is a writer and poet who has a novella, Littletown Secrets, debuting in June, 2013. In 2009, he penned a poem entitled "The Wait is So, So Long" that would go on to be adapted as a short film that would be featured and win a Gold Key Award at the NY-based Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Although he is currently employed as a Biology and Physics secondary school teacher, he writes everyday to have a significant body of work, to build discipline and to create his own voice and style in the world of West Indian literature.

Glenn Johnson is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. He has lived in Tucson, Arizona since he was 7 years old and is a graduate of the University of Arizona with a major in Inter-Disciplinary Studies: Literature, Sociology, and Psychology. He has worked in the American Indian community for 18 years—both reservation and urban - with many experiences of the personal challenge of being American Indian in a dominant non-Indian culture. For many years, he has been telling stories from those American Indian experiences. As a story teller in the American Indian oral tradition, Glenn has decided it is time to put his stories in writing. He is also a visual artist.

Carol Mitchell is a native of St. Kitts and Nevis, best known for her innovative children's books, the Caribbean Adventure Series. www.caribbeanadventureseries.com

Afzal Moolla was born to exiled South African parents engaged in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. He currently lives and works in Johannesburg.

Loretta Oleck is a poet and psychotherapist. Her poetry has been published in reviews/journals including The Westchester Review, Feminist Studies, The Mom Egg, Laughing Earth, Poetica Magazine, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Marco Polo Arts Magazine, among numerous others. More recently her work has been read at The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, as well as at other venues in and around New York. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from New York University.

Andrea Olivia Ottley was born and raised in the Federation of St.Kitts and Nevis. She is a mother of five children who enjoys motherhood as well as the kaleidoscope of life. She is a poet, a writer and a photographer who believes the world to be art in its natural and creative sense. She writes largely as a mean to comfort herself using native vernacular and vibrant descriptions to create her own voice and style in the world of Caribbean Literature.

Jenille Prince lives in Ottawa, Canada. Her parents are of Trinidadian descent and she lived in Trinidad for a few years during her childhood. In her stories, Jenille likes to focus on the mix of Caribbean and Canadian cultures and outlooks, and how they can co-exist in a single person. Her fiction has previously appeared in _Poui_ and _St. Somewhere Journal_.

Althea Romeo-Mark was born in Antigua, West Indies. She is an educator who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in the Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia, England and in Switzerland since 1991. She earned a B.A. in English and Secondary Education from the University of the Virgin Islands and an M.A. in Modern American Literature from Kent State University, U.S.A. She also has a Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. She considers herself a citizen of the world, having lived and taught in the US, Virgin Islands, the USA, Liberia, England and in Switzerland since 1991. She is married to Dr. Emmanuel F Mark of Hermitage, Grenada and is the mother of three adult children.

She was awarded the Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize by the Editorial Board of The Caribbean Writerin June, 2009 for publication (short story "Bitterleaf,") in Volume 22, 2008. Was one of a hundred guest poets invited to read at the XX International Poetry Festival of Medellin, Columbia. She writes poetry and short stories and has been published in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, USA, England, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Colombia, India, UK and Liberia.

She has published five collections of poems, If Only the Dust Would Settle, Authorhouse UK 2009, English-German, Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer (Sabanoh Press, Liberia 1989), Two Faces, Two Phases (Speed-o-graphics, Liberia 1984), Palaver (Downtown Poets Co-op, New York, 1978), and Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi: The Silent Dancing Spirit, (Department of Pan-African Studies, Kent State University, 1974)

CHJ Rousseau, a Trinidadian, is better known in publishing circles by her pen name Liane Spicer. She has been an English teacher, newspaper editor (The Grenadian Voice), freelance editor, reviewer (Trinidad Guardian, Nassau Guardian, South Florida Caribbean News) and novelist (Café au Lait). She blogs at Wordtryst [http://lianespicer.blogspot.com/] and is co-founder and coordinator of Novel Spaces [http://novelspaces.blogspot.com/], the blog home of a group of authors from the Caribbean, the USA and Malaysia.

Barbara Sandiford is a multi-genre writer and artist from Barbados.

Kristine Simelda is the author of two adult novels, a children's novel, three novellas, a collection of short stories for young adults and numerous poems and other short fiction. Born in the U.S., she has lived on the island of Dominica for the past nineteen years.

Vanessa Simmons was born and raised on Bequia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. She moved to Canada for her studies, where she received a degree in Comparative Literature and Culture, and currently works as a Library Assistant. In her free time she edits other people's writing instead of doing her own. She has been published by Compass, Inscribed, Calabash and The Caribbean Writer, and is a contributing editor at ARC Magazine.

Portia Subran was born in 1989 in Trinidad and has lived all her life in the growing city of Chaguanas. She was always interested in art as her father had always surrounded her with the works of the masters as well as the impressionists. She doesn't see herself as having a distinct style, but tries to encompass a range of styles from realistic portraiture, abstract pieces, to heavily design and detail oriented pieces. Subran is always trying to add new things to her artistic repertoire and draws something different almost everyday.

Clinton Van Inman was born in Walton on Thames, England in 1945 and received his BA from San Diego State in 1977. He is a high school teacher in Tampa Bay and plans to retire at the end of the school year. He lives in Sun City Center, Florida with his wife, Elba.

Sarah Venable was born in the US and educated all over the world. She has lived in the West Indies since 1992. This broad perspective influences her work as a writer, painter, tutor, and culinary creator. Her home is now Barbados.

The bulk of her published work has been non-fiction, primarily in regional and Barbadian magazine such as Maco, Ins & Outs of Barbados, and various in-flight publications. Other work - namely poems and a wacky piece of short fiction - can be found in Poui, the Cave Hill Annual, and The Truth About Oranges, an anthology of NIFCA-winning work.

Meanwhile, working with children in the WISE (Writers in Schools and Education) programme gives her a pleasurable challenge which sometimes leaves her hoarse.

Latoya Wakefield has been writing since her primary school days in Kingston, Jamaica. She's currently in the hospitality industry, but writing is her forever love. Her short story for children, "The Caterpillar That Was Afraid of the Cocoon", was published in Anansesem and her first book of poetry, Pieces of My Mind, Soul and Art was released in May of 2013. "Dreams and Reality" is excerpted from her, as yet, unpublished novel.

Kade Anthony Walker hails from Jamaica, where he attended Holmwood Technical High School. He enjoys reading, writing and socializing.

Patricia Whittle is Jamaican. She has published two books, namely Mi Waan Fi Publish A Book: An Anthology of Jamaican Dialect Poems and Johnny, Mass Tom and the Fatal Error: Three Short Plays for the Jamaican Audience. She is a librarian and a teacher of English Literature.

Tracey-Ann Wisdom is a writer, journalist, blogger and online content specialist from St Ann, Jamaica. She is a graduate of The University of the West Indies, Mona, with a BA in Media and Communication. Tracey has been an avid reader all her life and credits her late grandmother for instilling in her a love of books (and celebrity gossip). Her favourite writers include Toni Morisson, Zadie Smith, Nora Roberts and Elizabeth Gilbert. She hopes to one day become a Nobel Laureate. In the meantime, check out her blog write-overthink-rewrite.blogspot.com.
**Submission Guidelines**

_St. Somewhere Journal_ is published quarterly. New issues will be released in January, April, July and October. We accept English language submissions for publication in our online journal. Works written in English lexicon dialect/creole are also encouraged, as well as translations. Submissions are accepted via email only.

We welcome all genres, though we lean toward what is typically referred to as literary. The Caribbean region is our primary focus, with secondary emphasis on works with an international or general appeal. Work that has a strong connection to these areas, either literally or philosophically, has the best chance of acceptance. However, quality carries its own weight, regardless of subject matter.

**Fiction:** Please submit short fiction of 5,000 words or less. Submit your fiction as an attached document or in the body of your email. We prefer a web-friendly format, meaning that we'd appreciate it if you'd single space your paragraphs and double space between paragraphs, with no indentations.

**Poetry:** Any form is acceptable. Unlike some publications, we have no particular bias for or against rhyming poetry or free verse. Send no more than 5 poems, single spaced in the body of your email.

**Essay:** Please submit essays of 5,000 words or less. Submit your essay as an attached document, or in the body of your email. We prefer a web-friendly format (see above under "fiction"). For our purposes, we consider an essay to be literary, film or cultural criticism, book reviews or creative non-fiction.

**Visual Art:** Submissions of visual art will be accepted and considered for use as cover art for our publication, as well as interior art. Scanned images of visual works are acceptable, as well as photography. For photography that includes identifiable individuals, you must be able to provide a copy of a signed model release form. Please submit your art work as an attachment in .jpg format.

**Submitting:** All submissions should be sent via email to: mailto:editor@stsomewherejournal.com

Subject lines should be formatted as follows:

Submission - Fiction

Submission - Poetry

Submission - Art

Submission - Essay

Include your name (no internet "screen names") and a brief bio of no more than 150 words. If you have a website related to your writing or art, please provide a link. Please include all of this information in both the body of your email, as well as in any attached documents.

Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but we expect an immediate notification if your work has been accepted elsewhere. Previously published work is not generally accepted, though exceptions may be made, particularly for previously self-published work (including personal websites).

**Compensation:** At this time, we do not offer financial compensation for works published in _St. Somewhere Journal._ All contributors will benefit from exposure for their work, including a bio and reference to their own websites, if any. In an effort to further recognize our contributors, however, _St. Somewhere Journal_ will submit annual nominations to the prestigious Pushcart Prize.

**Rights:** Upon acceptance, _St. Somewhere Journal_ assumes first online publication rights, the right to include your work indefinitely in our online archives, the right to digitally distribute and archive your work through downloadable media (i.e. .PDF or .DOC files) or electronic book formats. For work that has been previously self-published, in print or online, please inform us of the publication specifics (including links to online locations, if applicable). We ask for exclusive online rights for 60 days after publication, after which you are welcome to publish your work elsewhere, either online or in print.

**Words of Advice:** Failure to follow the submission guidelines as outlined and explained here may result in your submission being rejected. Please proof read your work before submission, as well. While we are pleased to consider all submissions, anything that needlessly slows down the process may increase your chances of rejection. If you don't take your work seriously enough to follow these simple instructions, there is little reason for us to take your work seriously.
