Poems Published in the 18th edition of POUI:
Literary Journal, Univ. of the West Indies, Cavehill, Barbados
https://issuu.com/kerry36/docs/poui_xviii
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Manchineel
He was our teenage Hercules,
admired for his brawn and beauty,
but recklessness led him with a rope,
and his parents unable to cope,
sought guidance from a counselor, a pastor.
They said the army would set him straight,
and sent him off with prayers.
He did several tours of duty in lands
where death and destruction reigned.
He mastered firing machine guns,
excelled at eradication.
Now, he slowly drowns
in a deluge of annihilation.
What he saw, what he did, how he lived,
has plucked his will to rise above darkness,
has sucked him into a bunker,
and imprisoned him in a cinema-like-reel
of unending enemy fire.
He feels betrayed by man and God.
The devil daily roils him.
No exorcism of kind words or prayers
can pacify the volcano within.
When we pass the abandoned market stall
we skirt around him. He marches and shouts,
or sits in sullen concentration.
He has become our manchineel—
wild, acid-tongued, explosive.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 2016
The manchineel tree, native to the Western Hemisphere, is known as the most poisonous tree in the world. In places where it grows—Florida, the Caribbean, the Bahamas—the manchineel is often marked with a red band to warn passersby not to go too near it.
Now Boarding
The airport in Greece is full.
The waiting passengers
are hoping to escape from wars
they did not start, wars escalated
by foreign powers intervening
on behalf of rebel factions
that believe their cause
is more righteous than their enemies’.
Success is measured by
soulless, bomb-scarred buildings and
bodies forsaken on sidewalks,
in streets, along roadsides.
Flights now boarding for London,
Paris and Berlin the monitor says.
But arrivals and departure times
stay frozen on giant screens.
There is no landing, no taking off.
The country, stifled by a failing economy,
is trapped in its own purgatory.
Marking time, folks do not linger in waiting rooms.
They overflow onto jagged runways.
Confined to tents, they stare through
barbed-wire fences that hold them in limbo.
Unwanted, they await their fate.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 2016
From In Transit Poems
Shedding My Cocoon
I am ready to escape “The Rock,”
now a confining cocoon.
I taste the US through a buffet of cities,
New Haven, Cleveland, New York…,
my palate seeks pepper, new adventures.
Arriving in Liberia, I book into
a small hotel and bar.
They tell me the spoken dialect is Bassa.
The only familiar voice is that of Jimmy Cliff.
His song, “Many Rivers to Cross,”
has become someone’s mantra
and blares non-stop from a Jukebox
Its words sit on my chest
like a heavy, spicy meal.
“…and this loneliness won't leave me alone
It's such a drag to be on your own.”
It's such a drag to be on your own.”
It becomes a spell I have to shake off.
There is no going back to strangling snugness.
*“The Rock”- Refers to St. Thomas (USVI). Name given to the island by locals.
© Althea Romeo-Mark. 2016
Read POUI online below
http://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/LLL/poui/home.aspx
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