(for Anya) by Jennifer Rahim

To a stage that rivals any brand of farce, a light–
a young woman comes, a rainbow. No sign
taken for wonders hitched to dead pasts,
but witness of prophecy’s advent –Walcott’s
new Athens. Her field, a runway stylin’:
raiment as phenomenal as the language
islands stitched from worlds made seamless
as the weave of sea her hands command
into artefact . The eye astonished as at the dawning
of a star – the bright that explodes the possible,
even as we punish time for our failure to draw
nearer the distance for which Carter’s every-
child dreams: to live the will  to change tense– 
make miracle present, be blessing cup
that redeems the fault we all fit and silences
the mind’s bench of bats eager to tie millstones
about the necks of sunbeams. Anya,
architect of how we may wear our tomorrows, 
delight in this sad carnival of waste and mamaguy,
may your challenge be always what Thursdays
have come to mean, for us: our colours lifted up 
and the inexhaustible grace that is your name. 

© Jennifer Rahim, 2011




About Jennifer Rahim

Jennifer Rahim is Trinidadian. Her first collection of poems, Mothers Are Not the Only Linguists was published in 1992, followed by Between the Fence and the Forest (Peepal Tree, 2002). She also writes short fiction and criticism. She currently teaches at The Liberal Arts Department, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad.


Her poems have appeared in several Caribbean and international journals and anthologies. Some of these include The Caribbean Writer, Small Axe, The Trinidad and Tobago Review, The Graham House Review, Mangrove, The Malahat Review, Crossing Water, Creation Fire, The Sisters of Caliban, Crab Orchard Review and Atlanta Review. Short stories have appeared in The New Voices, The Caribbean Writer, and Caribbean Voices I.


Awards include The Gulf Insurance Writers Scholarship (1996) to attend the Caribbean Writers Summer Institute, Univ. of Miami; The New Voices Award of Merit (1993) for outstanding contributions to The New Voices journal; The Writers Union of Trinidad and Tobago Writer of the Year Award (1992) for the publication, Mothers Are Not The Only Linguists.