“Ironical master, passive mistress. Unseen hand
shaped by and shaping the grind of the elements.
Craft of possession and dispossession."
– Wilson Harris, The Waiting Room (1967)
Assuming few take notice then frightened move
away, the head makes up inmates to chat with;
like our hotel cleaners who rip fiction pages for wipes.
Eh eh, gyurl! that pineapple skin^clean ripe so.
Told one day You could lose those eyes! become
a princess, the toad girl follows the wand
waver Just one touch, you’ll see! Start Over
404.
^
This gringo ! wanting to take their only daughter
away | some Artificial magnet links at work
the mother fears. Skinny so! peck peck iPeas on
his plate. No soft Ursala boileggs for you.
Dulcie looking out her window ‘til this kiskadee
‘wing by. Think you doing better than me? Closer
to the heat source, why bother ? explaining
Ethiopian umbrellas; the ether cable attachment.
^
The town square ! setting life time sheets on fire
taps cell phone capture | long after the last
breath curls they say the pain remains. Relax!
gullets blow ash hot You get used to it.
Filament at its frailest, ours^theirs; partners
wondering what went right then wrong; pronoun
horns locked in deer trail devotion. A lot to process
here, our quill top skullars would submit.
– W.W.
YUH RAP SO (3.7)
Looking back over its shoulder at every
Shadow of its progress round every corner
Of the mind’s maze whose whims shadows swerve to serve:
How he envied his sheep + their ffflocking ways!
There, far from Guyana’s two big-ish cities –
Those backwaters content to seem backwaters
While informing the rational headquarters
Of world views which Caribbean islanders,
Reared on splinters off the two Americas
& locked to the hubris of seas sometime-ish
(He had first heard the term in the West Indies
As applied to others’ me-me moodiness)
Were too proudly particular to digest,
& might spurn as Guyanese pretensiveness
(from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 