Field hands five palmed not once radio saviours
beamed, Wheel kneel! come at altars of Sunday orange
sovereign head for tongue tip : tuft follicles felt
blessed unrubbingly turning grey.
Inky to relieve print pubs outset paper trail
crockery : whose commons cast shade fate to face
what
savants took provision place . which lords raised
umpire fingers roasting . tallyman corn plank
cross; how shack congestion seam stressed bed
wet wretches wrung with mandir cymbals . as hemp
rope puddle jumpers watched Tegla Loroupe pull
away.
Island
heart in hand cart‘graphers fence off pasture spirits
near . where croppers firm up skulls cake dust let
chew sticks brush ‘n’ tell : teeth left from gripping
nipples . bones measured, used to swell.
Astrologers peer, midriffs report : poui like
stars
no daffodilly Wordsmith could have imagined
sun deck the hills redress quadrilles.
Blue by now should have one home cleared all.
This world ~^~^~ Our place
Seasons of make do enchantment
Ocean futures inching flight risk crafters beaching
Ahead of ourselves, Greenwitchily, all the best.
-W.W.
MARA
*IN BRITISH Guiana, the word ‘colony’
Used to be chief policeman of the Mother
Country's ‘natural’ right to Her property.
In still anglo-colonized Canada, no-one seems
To have heard of the C-word with its brass ring
Of labels stapled to ones breath’s tongue. (In ‘free’
Guyana, few dared grunt or sigh the D-word.)
Ruler-ships have been replaced by slave-ship malls
Of ones democratic right to choose to stay
A slave, and Her Majesty ‒ perched at the edge
Of a gilt chair, behind her behind wedged her tight purse
Of numbers and words of a curse with its mask
Still haunting a corner of ones postage-stamps ‒
Could tell one why caged birds want to sing, but can’t.
(from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 