“We get used to the life we lead, and that
habit becomes a destiny that feels foreign
to us.”
- Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch (1966)
They radio^play folk songs about the ways; still
not easy to outsort the fake from world new plate;
breeders @flyborne talk pits.
Good story cover?
we there minding we own patwa when this ocean
boom! start gushing yay! above the forest myths
we hoof ‘n’ scale.
^
Modern island mates ! bracelet^slaps like cane
on his chair bottom, need unknowable; her nightie
hitch up switchin’ top down trickle; fold^holdin’
so.
Speech free, in garland hung performance
size argues in the pool | outside room program
climbers chitter, watch . relieve the trees.
^
Past ending, how gears mesh? villages with names
like Triumph, La Belle Alliance, all the thanks
we get, must give | mudflat hands soap stock
dealers bald strop^shaving.
How tangled roots back bone our day? Jour
overt, head tail sore from overnight coin
tossing; belly pot resigned | on Transit ask
what fevers grip the purse that saves; Godspeed
dock.
– W.W.
YUH RAP SO (4.3)
Still, it incensed her that a few were guilty
Of sprouting the most mindless prejudices,
Crass toadstools spored through the concoction of Race
By the same perverse tribalists who policed
The cult of Local Colour – including leashed
Black guard-dogs slobbering beside the hidden
White-uniformed hips of pale Portuguese-ish
Nuns in black boots posed between two brown sandalled
African men (as black as Portags couldn’t
Be white) stilling the beasts barking blue murder
At The New Nation’s invasive snapshooter:
Watching the dogs, Dilys had thought – At least they
Aren’t posing! for that noisepaper’s Culture Page
(from “Raponani”, by Brian Chan, 2023)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 