Lake Chad
When we walked out the sea had vanished, when we blinked we saw a lake
but it was dark and we did not know
if we could trust our eyes.
Two thousand deaths they say, none know they raze our houses, only guns survive
all schools are emptied for this lesson
our blood, like the lake, slowly dries.
Erasure of Horace’s Epode IX, Translated from the Latin by Ron Horning
When,
shall we praise
by drinking
you
by hearing
the sea son
fled burning ships
chains
slaves friends.
Now
sold a burning kiss
erect
the shriveled tits
ripples sunlight
among the dishonored standards.
Rearing
chanting snorting
the enemy to the left
We’ve won already
We’ve won already
a salted grave
purple soldier
sails one hundred cities
coast
driven plunging rough
fighting winds
break fill
flasks
pour the last
fears selves
wash away.
Manzanilla
For those of us who live at the shoreline
– Audre Lorde, ‘A Litany for Survival’
mother
we have
come back
to be
inside you
mother
we have
come back
to be
inside you
mother
we have
come back
to be
inside you
mother
we have
come back
to be
Shells
Here, it reminds me somehow of you.
– Mervyn Taylor, ‘The White Shell’
A palm open to nothing.
– Harriet Brown, ‘Shell’
I.
I found it in the wash, the brown
shell I picked up from the beach
that last day, the little tornado
torn open, smooth, muscular,
alien among my cottons and whites.
We did not say goodbye. But this relic,
once tossed by rough waves, once
the home of something, houses us.
I wish I had kept more, made
a chorus safe inside my folds,
multitudinous
II.
Manzanilla
echo
shelter
sky
destruction
being
passing
federation
free
III.
every palm tree has scars
rings on its trunk mark the years
like the lines inside a shell
hard sheaths protect the leaves
though one day each crown must die
for the tree to give life again
IV.
Mother, in your hands
are the days, gallery rooms
in which you hand the ocean,
or the shock of the blueness of a uniform
on the first day of school when you leave me
standing at the door to the classroom
and say I am coming back, it will be okay,
or that day on the bay when the
waves made sand into quicksand
and as I sank I felt I could disappear
into the life that was still to come
V.
together at last
our dreaming eyelids shut
our bodies clammed in fibrous vessels
messages thoughts
hopes fears memories
each whorl a masterpiece, studding
the white walls of our thoughts
Where are we now?
The Beach House
When they were much older, our parents ran away from us. The warning signs had been there for weeks. But we did not notice, until they had already escaped. The first clue was how items of food disappeared from the kitchen. They were secretly hoarding. Then Dad came home from work one day very early and said he did not have to go to work anymore. Then mommy – who by this stage was always forgetful of our names – started to work, but we were never sure what she was doing. They would both go for long drives in the country and sometimes come back late at night with plastic bags filled with fruit. The last time we saw them, they said they were going to the beach-house at Redhead Bay in Cumana. When we eventually got there, days later, the beach-house was a shell of nothing but concrete debris and rust. There was no roof, the walls had fallen down years ago and had been overtaken by vines. The bush in the yard was high. No-one had stayed there for ages. One neighbor on the track said she heard things but never looked. The oil-rig glowed in the distance over the sea, a giant orange eye.
Pitch Lake
life on another planet
things we can’t explain
black tarpaulin
quicksand skin
sulfurous mother
times change
they stay the same
the lake won’t end
Andre Bagoo is a Trinidadian poet and writer. His second book of poems, BURN, was published by Shearsman Books and longlisted for the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. His poetry has appeared or is due at Boston Review, Blackbox Manifold, Caribbean Review of Books, Cincinnati Review, Moko, Poetry Review (UK), St Petersburg Review and elsewhere. His third book, Pitch Lake, is forthcoming from Peepal Tree Press in 2017.