"Teaching J to Read" by Ashley Jones

I don’t know how to begin,

how to explain that A means A,

that B isn’t Beaver

but simply B,

the second drawing

in a series of twenty-six.

He is in the fifth grade

and he can’t read about Dick or Jane.

He spends his days

finding new places to hide—

in between book chapters, scraping ink;

at the end of a punchline;

on the lip of a carton of milk.

I am useless, like an after-school special—

here, there is no purple dinosaur,

no sparkle in our smiles,

no bell-toned music to montage this away.

He finds pig in big

and the way a fist can solve these things.

He loses his name

in the sprawling alphabet—

the surest letter is the first: J.

This is the dark curve

that marks him,

and, even now,

I can’t remember the letters

that follow.

Ashley M. Jones is now in her second year at FIU, where she is a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow in Poetry. She is originally from Birmingham, Alabama, and her poetry has been published in Aura Literary Arts Review, Sanctuary Literary Magazine, and the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy.

***

Poetry Friday: Future Tense (For Roger Ebert)

It is going to happen isn't it?
Though not from the fiction 
my preacher spun from his pulpit 
about being conceived in sin.

No, from my doctor's version 
it will be the unraveling story 
of my genes measured 
in a tangle of IV drips 

that will cocoon my hospital bed.
But the future I'd like to imagine 
is while strolling with my wife of 50+
summers, and she's walked ahead, 

there'll be throb in my arm.
And I'll stumble toward a bench 
to catch a final glimpse of the wind 
wrapping her skirt around her legs.

Poetry Friday: "Christmas Garden"

Christmas Garden

(For Randi Gray Christensen)

After months of guiding young brothers

abandoned to raw cries of the streets,

years of returning Garvey's name to the page,

a lifetime of worrying about my children,

I limp home to my neglected garden

in late December as the evening sun

settles on the forehead of broken

Madonnas nestled in red mulch.

Palm fronds break crisply between my fingers

smothering delicate orchids latched

on the side of the avocado that offered

shade in summer but not enough

for lavenders that withered in August heat.

Yet in a far corner, a poinsettia that I'd written

off in early March after caterpillars

had chewed green from the stems,

leaving stalks in the shadow of their wings

has bloomed near the dry fencepost:

the fire in its leaves as impossible

as the idea of our redemption.

***
Blog Disclosure Policy

Geoffrey Philp’s Blog Spot receives a percentage of the purchase price on anything you buy through links to Amazon, Shambala Books, Hay House, or any of the Google ads or Google Custom Search.

***

Disclaimer of Endorsement

The documents posted on this Web site may contain hypertext links or pointers to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links and pointers are provided for visitors' convenience. I do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any linked information. Further, the inclusion of links or pointers to other Web sites or agencies is not intended to assign importance to those sites and the information contained therein, nor is it intended to endorse, recommend, or favor any views expressed, or commercial products or services offered on these outside sites, or the organizations sponsoring the sites, by trade name, trademark, manufacture, or otherwise.

Reference in this Web site to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the site's visitors, and does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by this blog.

"A Family Man" by Dennis Scott

Dennis Scott

A Family Man

At night when the ordinary loves have settled

like dust drifting a little in my son’s cough, my wife’s

                 breath, my daughter’s sigh,

I call them in. From the dark side of leaves,

from the countries of desire, from the cracks in the road,

from the places I went to and never gave back

at the border, the faces I wanted and never forgave

for dying, from the dark side of leaves, they come

softer than smoke, shadows on paper,

like dust drifting a little in my wife’s cough, my son’s

                 sigh, my daughter’s breath.

They make hoarse journeys in my head. They cry

at the lamp’s white pain. I silence them.

They orbit, tongueless. They die like stars; they cool

to ash. I trace their stain on paper, and sign it.

                Watch them

wind my life down like small, burnt moons. Watch them

                 fall

like dust drifting a little in my daughter’s cough, my wife’s

                 sigh, my son’s breath.

Dennis Scott was born in Jamaica in 1939. He had a distinguished career as a poet, playwright, actor (he was Lester Tibideaux in The Cosby Show), dancer in the Jamaican National Dance Theatre, an editor of Caribbean Quarterly and teacher. His first collection, Uncle Time (1973) was one of the first to establish the absolutely serious use of nation language in lyric poetry. His other poetry collections include Dreadwalk (1982) and Strategies (1989). His plays include Terminus, Dog, Echo in the Bone, and Scott’s work is acknowledged as one of the major influences on the direction of Caribbean theatre. He died at the early age of fifty-one in 1991.

Dennis Scott: Dennis Scott Biography - (1939 –91), Caribbean Quarterly.

***

Poetry Friday: Cynthia James

Writing Forward
 
Hold nothing against the daffodil,
potent against the cancer of self-love and aged forgetfulness;
but beware the bulb; mistake it not for the onion;
it can kill; it’s subtext for the Ides of March, but also
‘comes before the swallow dares’ in The Winter’s Tale;
grind and smear it on topical wounds only;
for it’s death and spring, bad luck and morning glory;
it flowered in the Garden of Gethsemane and at Stonehenge;
meanwhile turn the page; it’s the only way to complete
your chapter of the story, you Mau-Mau-ed, castrated,
you waiting for the return of the Balangiga and the Kohinoor;
the eye of history is longer than you can imagine;
learn the lore of all bush medicine with thanksgiving;
go where you will, love where you will, live where you will
 
© Cynthia James October 2012


About Cynthia James

 
Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, living for the past 3 years in Toronto. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found in publications such as Callaloo,Caribbean Writer and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse.

Poetry Friday: Cynthia James

May Shuttlecock

 
The day before, I’d left the gold leaf candelabras in Cantaro;
white holy ghosts wing-spanned the high blue apse of Santa Cruz;
I was confirmed again, crowned with cascading tulle, wild lilies
and forget-me-nots. ‘Twas May, the rains had not yet
washed away the yellow candles kindling tender fires,
and surfeited, I wondered how and why I’d sunk so low
within the vale to miss the Hubble view and give this up.
The old singer in the corner needed but a shuttle;
I went out and bought, passing the day soft, loud
pedalling the treadle’s lockstitch revolutions.
The next day my flight confirmed, I climbed the clouds,
suction-cupped my ears, swore against all birds, and landed
routinely at Pearson. By evening I’d trod fallen acacia crisps,
windblown bread crumbs, and yellow buttons helix-spiked,
kicking heads sprung in thawed and tilled dogs pats.

***

Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, living for the past 3 years in Toronto. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found in publications such as Callaloo,Caribbean Writer and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse.





Follow @GeoffreyPhilp

1 Minute Book Review: Vessels by Andre Bagoo

Name of the book: Trick Vessels

Author: Andre Bagoo

Publisher: Shearsman Books

What's the book about? "Aptly titled are these poems: they are like vials without bottoms … held up, looked through, a universe can be discerned. They pour and continue to pour a mixture of guile and subterfuge, language that contradicts, and bargains for its own sanity, contents in volume denying the size of these trick vessels." — Mervyn Taylor

Why am I reading the book? Bagoo's juxtapositions usher the reader into Caribbean landscapes that are dreamlike and terrifying. Yet he controls the tone and scope so masterfully that the poems become experiences in themselves.

Quote from the book:

here
the strongest of bodies are dazed
beneath showers of diamond sprinkles
a thousand cold handcuffs
fall on black limbs
men clothed in blue
to mark them as 'lifers':

Where to buy: http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2012/bagoo.html

***

I've modified this format from One Minute Book Reviews: http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/

If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook.

Follow @GeoffreyPhilp

Thank you!

World Literature Today: Interview With Geoffrey Philp

Give thanks and praises to World Literature Today (May/June 2012) for publishing in their 350th issue, an interview I did with Erika Waters, founding editor of The Caribbean Writer.


World Literature Today also published two poems, "Roots" (Hurricane Center) and "A Prayer for My Children (Dub Wise), and you can listen to me reading the poems at the WLT website, worldliteraturetoday.com: http://worldliteraturetoday.com/2012/may/two-poems-geoffrey-philp

World Literature Today| May 2012: http://bit.ly/J9rIhJ





***


If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook.





Thank you!

The Florida Poets Project: Geoffrey Philp

The Florida Poets Project: Geoffrey Philp

My heartfelt thanks to Professor Maurice O'Sullivan of Rollins College for including me in this project; Bill Dudley for shooting, editing, and directing the video, and the sponsors of this grant:

The Florida Poets Project has been funded by a grant from the

Central Florida English Speaking Union

Drey Endowment

Executive Producer Maurice O'Sullivan

Production Assistant Susan M. Fowler

Shot and Directed by Bill Dudley

***


If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook.





Thank you!

“The Sugar Clock” by Cynthia James

 

This setting back and forwarding
the clock, lengthening and shortening time,
is not in my experience
 
I learned and laboured under one timepiece,
the sugar clock, somewhere near the great house
deep in the crevice of my ear still going strong
 
the wailing ICTA horn blaring at five to seven, five to twelve and five to four;
more than a century of wailing - (1820s to 1921 - estate,
usine - plantation time seems distant!)
 
when to pick up tools, when to lay them down and when to lunch -
I have no picture of this timepiece, no sense of what it was,
but in the bowel of the you-we sugar factory, sure it was!
 
Some say ‘twas pressured steam, but in my mind
it was a round alarm with finger lever, iron, brass or shiny silver,
nippled like the cycle bell Works workers rode out, clicking after it went off.
 
Who pulled it? Or was it automatic?
Did its wail wind round the campus weekends, too, when I was gone?
Or did absentee hands run round its face invisibly
 
like on these fancy modern digitals?
Halfway between a warning and rebellion
sometimes it sounded like a conch! but no, it was no conch,
 
or else I’d seen a Maroon man, built say like the Orisha Andrew,
master drummer, going in and out.
I moved in step with it, shell shocked.
 
Who turned it off? And when?
Did its sly slumbering regime rankle you-we historians?
Who knows the what and why, the grip of memory?
 
Oriens Ex Occidente Lux
Did it shut off on its accord when the steam engine rusted?
When did it cease to be that relic of “the bulwark that we watch” way south?
 
 
 
©Cynthia James 2012

 
 
 
Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, living for the past 3 years in Toronto. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found in publications such as Callaloo, Caribbean Writer and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse.

***

If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!
 

Master Poet: Zandolie

Give thanks to Professor Zero for sharing the work of Zandolie, a master poet in the Kaiso genre. I've been studying Zandolie all week.


Besides the immediately infectious melody, I was impressed by his use of allusions, couplets, and double-entendre to create a plausible narrative with a beginning, middle, and a surprise ending. And it's not a one-time performance. Many younger poets should take note how he demonstrates his skill in other songs such as "Too Much Man Family" and my favorite, "De Iron Man."


Of late, I've been reading many poems that lack this element of surprise. Rhyme is like a springboard where a poet propels her words through time, and we wait in anticipation to see if she will accomplish the complex maneuver.


Zandolie scores a perfect 10 every time.

***

If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you! 

"La Sirene" by Geoffrey Philp

Whenever her song from the first time
I rowed to where the horizon was as wide

as my despair, rises with bubbles that froth
the tips of the surf and lap the sides of my boat,

I feel like flinging my body beyond the luminous
fish that glide away from the light (such beauty

I know I will never possess) desperate
as her pleas, the promise of wholeness

beneath the waves that knot my tangled
lines in the roots of her hair. But the scent

from star-apple stormed valleys
that ache with the strain of desire

and cripple, like my love,
anchors me to that distant shore.

Graphic: Christina Philp

"Buxton Lady Under Lock Down" by Cynthia James

Buxton Lady Under Lock Down

 

we would sit in the elephant ear of a marble queen, 
icing dusting the skylight, listening to the wattle 
wheezing through the atrium, the karaoke 
tinkle of Ol’Virginny, Ol’ Kentucky Home inside


warm apple cider drunk, she’d say, “Those songs 
we learnt in school, is only when I come I understand. 
But I is from Kaywana stock; this place make you 
more black. You must bring me some cocoa butter 


when you coming next time,” rubbing Buxton spice;
we watched cars swish, slip, slurping past grey fingered trees
“Was a day like this that send me here; white, no headlights; 
I didn’t see, nobody see, nobody say, nobody talk for me; he


burn like crisp; if wasn’t for my Buxton pride I dead already.”
but summer she was different; then we went out on Wheel-Trans. 
“Look,” she says, “Imagine me who make with nail, tinin and 
hammer, grater from scratch, buying coconut in frozen 


quarter pound square pack. You know bout metamgee?  
conkie? A tumbler of swank, Man, down the hatch!”
Then we would join the ladies for some checkers, bingo, 
even take in the fashion show. “Is a man you know! 


Wait till she start to strip. We ask the recreation people 
for her every year.” And she shouting loud, “Go more! 
Take off the shirt!” And bad talk Victor, her one and only son,
full of guile who just so, she-say-he-say, “Let’s go for a drive ...”


but she going back for her gold ring on the bureau
the Deceased Egbert give her. Now that was man!
“I could teach you the computer; you’ll like Facebook,”
“Unh-unh,” she said, “is a long long way to Tipperary.
 Dawg a lay down, ashes cold.”

©Cynthia James 2012




 
About Cynthia James

 
Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, living for the past 3 years in Toronto. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found in publications such as Callaloo, Caribbean Writer and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse.
 

***

Joseph’s Journey (For Randi Gray Kristensen)

Joseph had grown old enough not to believe
The occupiers of the holy places in Jerusalem 

Whose lies, curled like shavings of cedar
From his blade, surrounded him on the floor, 

Sweat for the few shekels that he earned,
Taxed by Romans whose peace defiled rivers 

With blood, mountains with their standards.
Yet as far east as the roads crowded with caravans 

Could travel, spears sprouted from the sand.
The coin from Mary's uncle burned in his palm, 

And Joseph turned it once more, perhaps, for an omen
That would ease his heart from the gossip in his town. 

But when she greeted his eyes and blessed his hands,
He lowered his head and surrendered to her love.

Image: http://homileticdiakonia.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-mass-at-midnight.html

***

Give thanks to Randi, who has made me restart my practice of writing a poem or story for Christmas. I've collected some of the best in Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

"First Light (for Shara McCallum)"

First Light

 (for Shara McCallum)

Dawta, the blood that spilled bright

on blades of sawgrass, a scent like rust

rising in your nostrils, twisted

into your terrible locks. I wish I could

have turned your head away, for you not

to have witnessed the slow slump of the body

on the earth that greeted the thud

of the shell when the soul becomes one

with the light around the tamarinds.

But like thunder on the surf whose rage

shatters sand dollars that crumble

in our hands, you can no longer take refuge

in the mangroves' memory of wholeness,

your flight into an orphaned sun.

© Geoffrey Philp 2011

Shara McCallum will read at the Miami Book Fair International on Saturday, November 19, 2011

(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.

"Stone" by Geoffrey Philp

All you need is one smooth stone

To fling your rage, buss Babylon head:

Watch downpressor stagger, drunk from the blood

Of sufferahs, who have not sworn

Their lives to the beast, waiting to be fed.

All you need is one smooth stone,

Clean as a skull or a shinbone

Raked from the Atlantic sea bed

An altar for ghosts, who will not be comforted.

All you need is one smooth stone.

First Love

Shock to my fingers:

a lump unravels our life,

but not our embrace.

***

"24 hrs 2 Guinea" by Cynthia James

24 hrs 2 Guinea

the rosewood dawn recedes, thin laced with

milk-heart signatures;  the ice below thaws;

brown strangled tufts raise pickanini heads

in cracks of sidewalks

bees are not yet out, but ants climb up and down

viburnum stalks (flush now with scented clusters

where scarce a month ago this sweet lime hedge

was briar patched with thorns),

shivering white petals, antennae digging deep down

in  the calyx, feeler-ing  the nippled berries hardening

at the cup;  it’s Saturday, mid-May exactly;

and all is good.

at broadview,  where I board, the streetcar driver leaps out

to single-point a crowbar switch, the witch-broom trailing,

pulling us suspended on the centre rail, backwards

to Main from Carlton.

and I go past the diasporic new-world united nations

line-up, urging cringing baby bok choy, Ch-u-ut!

to stand up to the threatening fangs

of blood red dragon fruit;

at little India, watch the wind float the sari

of the woman with the nakpul and the red dot,

ripple damask drapes and Himalayan pelts

without a touch;

glide over earthen jugs, brass vases, shiny cooking pots,

guarded slant-eyed by smiling amulets of Durga, Kali, Shakti,

juggling creation and destruction in multiples of even hands;

mid-May exactly, a Saturday,

and all is quiet;

but time is a chameleon, every so often confounding near and distant; 

today I’m the Guinea woman, flying three, four, five hundred years,

reeled back  before my time across the skein of difference, 

a frothy wake of spume

dribbling down my chin like soap suds, splashed up from Monday

morning white clothes wash, spores popping as the scum dries,

under the dingy ochred outer circle of a cappuchino sky;

we’ve run off track

without point-catch in a modern city mapped on ancient legends; 

a heart shakes off its smouldering ash, and there’s Akan Oroonoko,

trussed up like a suckling pig, puffing on a pipe, taunting his tormentors.

eyes kindle hard-stare accusation;

otherwise, sudoku and the 24- hour paper occupy; meanwhile

brown babies nonchalantly chatter, mocking this old street car,

pulling me, Guinea woman, back to a different place and time 

About Cynthia James

Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, living for the past 3 years in Toronto. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found in publications such as Callaloo, Caribbean Writer and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse

***

"Se Bon" by Felix Morisseau-Leroy

Se Bon!

That’s fine!

That’s fine

That’s fine, judge

That’s fine, father

That’s fine, deputy

That’s fine, big shot

That’s fine, chief

What do you want me to say?

That’s fine

What else can I say?

That’s fine

That’s fine ,your honor

Judge me

Condemn me

Discharge me

That’s fine, father

Baptize me

Confess me

Give me holy communion

Confirm me

Bury me

Say the absolution prayer for me

That’s fine, deputy

Tap my shoulder

I’ll vote for you

That’s right

Eat my food

Sleep in my bed

My daughter will make coffee

What a good jack-of all-trades

She’d be in town!

O that’s fine,

Cop

Beat me up, sheriff

Sticks have no memory

That’s fine, policeman

Arrest me

Set me free just before Election Day.

That’s fine, marshal

That’s fine surveyor

Put me out

Serve me a warrant

What else can I say?

That’s fine

I say: That is fine

That’s fine, deputy

I’ll be drunk as a skunk

On election day.

That’s fine, pastor

Convert men

Civilize me

That’s fine

Call me brrother

Say it again

Deal with me in folklore

Make books out of me

Buy me cheap

Sell me expensive

That’s fine

“Se Bon!” by Felix Morisseau-Leroy. Hatiad & Oddities. Pantaleon Guilbaud. 1991.

Translation by Marie-Marcelle B. Racine

Morisseau-Leroy was an outspoken advocate for the poor in Haiti. In this poem, Morisseau-Leroy catalogs the rogues, whose class warfare and prejudice against the dispossessed is demonstrated in a familiar pattern of laws and religion which are enforced by the deputies, priests, and judges. And to which the speaker can only respond by saying, “Se bon!”

But the speaker’s voice is not resigned to the misery. There is a sharp note of sarcasm when he says, “Sleep in my bed/ My daughter will make coffee/ What a good jack-of all-trades/ She’d be in town.” For if the only way to survive the oppression is to feign contentment, then “Se Bon!”

About Félix Morisseau-Leroy

Félix Morisseau-Leroy (Haitian Creole: Feliks Moriso-Lewa; 13 March 1912 – 5 September 1998), was a Haitian writer who wrote in Haitian Créole for poetry and plays, the first significant writer to do so. By 1961 he succeeded in having Créole recognized as an official language of Haiti, after expanding its teaching in schools and use in creative literature. Morisseau also published works on French, Haitian Créole and Haitian French literature. He worked internationally, encouraging the development of national literature in post-colonial Ghana and Senegal. In 1981 he settled in Miami, Florida, where he was influential in uniting the Haitian community around Créole and encouraged its study in academia.

Source: Wikipedia