In Transit, Poems Published in The Caribbean Writer, Volume 37
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In addition to my short story, “Saving Papa Rojas from the Bedside,” which won The Vincent Cooper Literary Prize, I had three poems published in The Caribbean Writer, volume 37.
I forgot to mention them in the excitement of receiving such an honor. So here they are at last.
In Transit Poems below:
I
Don’t Stop the Bacchanal
On
arriving in Antigua
I
am told at the taxi-stand,
it
is the last night of carnival
and
the traffic is jammed.
I
am warned I might
have
to get to my hotel on foot.
Would the driver just drop me off
on the roadside like abandoned cargo?
As
predicted, roads, jam-packed
with
merry-makers, are impassable.
“You will have to get out and walk,” says the driver.
I
expect the worst as he parks,
and
I climb out to the
pling-plang,
pling-a-ling of steel pans.
As
a stranger in St. John,
I
ask myself how will I find my way in the dark,
through
streets packed with drunk and delirious revelers.
But
the driver secures my bag and pulls it along.
I
exhale and follow, thanking God.
Soon
we are side by side and silent,
and
we wind our way through alleys
crammed
with carousers
jumping
and jamming to blaring calypso.
At
the hotel, I show my gratefulness
to
the driver with a big tip—
I
haven’t been mobbed or mauled.
The
boom-boom-boom from bands,
surrounds
and shakes the hotel room.
I
ruminate on how I will fall asleep,
but
at 12:00 midnight
the
music abruptly stops
as
if someone had cast a magic wand.
© Althea Romeo-Mark
Taxi Ride in Nairobi, Kenya
My delayed flight arrives past midnight.
The assigned hotel driver has aborted his mission.
As a stranger on Nairobi’s roads,
it is not what I had envisioned.
Brochures say Hotel Nairobi is a ten-minutes ride away.
The taxi driver, bumping up and down dusty roads,
seems unfamiliar with this town.
Anxiety is a severe heartburn. I need calm.
Soon dark thoughts
hijack my imagination,
swirl like a tornado.
Is this a kidnapping?
Would I soon be dead—
no more than a ransacked
bag of maize on the roadside?
Is that soft-spoken voice only a ploy
to ease my suspicion?
Fear turns to frustration.
Anger simmers under my polite façade.
The taxi driver, seeking directions,
holds long conversations with his boss-man.
It is 2:00 am before we reach
my long-sought lodging.
Morning soon greets me
through the curtains in the hotel room.
The smell of fresh paint clogs my nose.
It is enough to make me swoon.
The water has not yet been turned on.
But good news arrives at breakfast.
Wi-fi connected, my daughter greets me
from a hospital bed…My second granddaughter,
impatient with her cuddly cocoon,
has made her grand entrance into this world.
Last night’s frightful two-hour
journey
to what was a ten-minute destination
is overridden by elation.
© Althea Romeo-Mark
Dropping Excess Baggage
In a waiting room at Schiphol Airport
a passenger, thinking I am her compatriot,
seats herself next to me.
She borrows my ear or did I lend it willingly
to assuage the hours of waiting?
Waiting is a blight of inter-continental flights.
Was there something in my face,
that spoke of confessionals?
Did I look like a priestess
on-call to relieve the weight
of the world’s excess baggage.
She says she is flying home
to Johannesburg from Sweden
after spending time with her daughter,
then begins to unload her worries
about her offspring married to a Swede,
their unhappiness deepened by deflating dreams,
the growing distance between their hearts,
a marriage that has become a suffocating pillow.
Then the mother talks of the freedom
that came with her husband’s death.
No more dragging the drunk home!
No more cheating!
No more verbal bashings!
No more beatings!
I am happy he is dead, she says.
Her face speaks for her heart.
Her smile wide, her eyes fill with light
as she relives that moment of liberation,
the unburdening of life-breaking baggage.
© Althea Romeo Mark
Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo-Mark is an educator and
writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught
in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia (West Africa), England and
Switzerland since 1991.
Awards, Prizes, Scholarships
Althea Romeo Mark is the winner of the Vincent Cooper
Literary Prize.
The Vincent Cooper Literary Prize to a Caribbean author
for exemplary writing in a Caribbean Nation Language (a term used by celebrated
post-colonial Caribbean author Kamau Brathwaite to describe vernacular language
born in the Caribbean). The 2023 recipient is a prize-winning poet and fiction
writer, educator Althea Romeo Mark for her short story,” Saving
Papa Rojas from the Deathbed Flirt.” Romeo-Mark is an Antiguan-born
educator and internationally published writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US
Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in the Virgin Islands, USA,
Liberia, England, and Switzerland since 1991. She writes short stories and
personal essays in addition to poetry and has been published. in the Virgin
Islands, Puerto Rico, Antigua, and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, USA,
England, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Colombia, India, the U.K., Kenya, Liberia,
Romania, and Switzerland. Her last poetry collection, The Nakedness of New, was
published in 2018.
Althea was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in 2024 It is one of the most prestigious contests in poetry. As Kelsay Books publishers stated,” We are happy to submit your book representing Kelsay Books poetry collections published in 2023. https://www.hofferaward.com/
She was awarded the Arts and Science Poetry Prize for
poems published in POEZY 21:Antologia Festivaluluiinternational Noptile De
Poezie De Curtea De Arges, Curtea De Arges, Romania, 2017. She was awarded the Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize by the Editorial Board of The
Caribbean Writer in June 2009 for publication (short story “Bitterleaf,”)
in Volume 22, 2009. Short story prize for “Easter Sunday,” Stauffacher
English Short Story Competition/Switzerland 1995; Poetry Award for the poem “Ole No-Teeth Mama,” Cuyahoga
Community Writers Conference. 1974, Scholarship Award. Breadloaf Writers’
Conference. Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. 1971.
These In Transit Poems are very interesting and this is attributable to the maturity of the poet, who now has ample time to use her vast reservoir of knowledge to flood the world. I like Dropping Excess Baggage - a redemption of the wife from a drunk and nagging husband. He is punished by death to free the wife in a little way eventhough she will pay other costs of living now in his stead. In a way these poems show that one must listen to every conversation while in transit and find the time to piece together whatever sense or nonsense can be gleaned therefrom. ARM is really in top form and I wish she can do more of these free flowing poems for the benefit of humanity. Gbawu Flomo Woiwor, Monrovia, Liberia (West Africa)
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