Live Free
Your thoughts and words are of no consequence to me.
I am free.
Blue Dream (I am just a descendant)
Inna mi dream -
a blue dream,
where we
trod through tanks of indigo
years upon years
with paddles,
hands wrinkled
bodies being burnt,
like your tar babies,
I am that little Black Girl
I can also vividly remember being told by somebody I loved that I was beautiful for a black girl. I can honestly say that I did not fully understand the implications of this comment. I now understand.
She Who Has Found Herself
Sitting straight-backed on a cluster of smooth rocks, not too far from Jonita, was a breadnut-brown woman with a sprawling afro enclosed in a circle of plaits decorated with iridescent shells at the base, and a lush body with a waist that curved into…
Don't Marry Us. Instead, Stand By Us.
The worst part of it all, is that there are deep roots of trauma still plaguing our families yet the outsiders only care about the resorts, the plantain, or the reggae that is overplayed on certain radio stations.
Pretty Little Bird
Caged
Pretty little bird,
I adore your coiled feathers
Invisible Scars
Here she was, head laid, in the lap of the boy who was her rising sun, the peas to her rice. A tender moment spoiled by a bigoted anecdote.
Untethered
The black woman has been shackled with the baggage of centuries of racial discrimination, religious and social control, censorship, as well as sexual repression.
But This is Not My Child
I could never tell a single soul how I really feel about the girl-child. She is not of me. She is my husband’s child.
The Universe in Her Eyes
This piece depicts a woman of African descent gazing directly at the viewer as tropical flowers, frozen in motion, waft past her face.
The Objections of Cats
My words pat her on the hand and
Shoo her protests like stray cats
But
She objects just once more
Trapped
My bones and spirit broken
Battered, bruised and slapped.
Words are unspoken
Inside my body trapped.
Hot Oil
It was while she was frying plantains one day that she had a thought. She recalled how her mother used to tell her that to get the best results, the oil had to be very hot. “That’s it!” she exclaimed.
Daughter of Eve
I desperately grasped for the light, the dark water swallowing me up. The voices mocking me. I couldn’t stop now.
THE WHITE ROOM
Everything was completely white. I was the only object of colour but for once that excited me. I shut the door behind me and began to look around. There really wasn’t much to see, two white leather couches, white Persian rug, white statue of some naked man. It was boring, but new all the same.
Escape
Looking through this window
Drowning in a river of tears
My bruises begin to show
Silenced by my fears
New Names
We've fought then, we fight now.
Who kyah hear, muss burn. And I'm
tired of that being us,
Enjoy Vagina
You wish you could but how do you forget about a guy who feel like it is all right to walk around with the words “Enjoy Vagina” in coca cola font across his chest, as though it were another flavour the company brought out?
Sensory Adaptation
Colonialism never done, only adapted; they changed its mask. We see our leaders are nothing but puppets to the same masters. Spitting in our faces progressive rhetorics while doing their master's bid.
Brown Oceans
Do oceans that aren’t
green or blue…