// ************************************************************************************ // ** This file has been created with the Rotating Content Tool by Amesbury Web. ** // ** For more information, visit us on the web: ** // ** ** // ** Rotating Content Tool -- http://rotatecontent.com/ ** // ** Company: Amesbury Web -- http://amesburyweb.com/ ** // ** Author: Randy Hoyt -- http://randyhoyt.com/ ** // ** ** // ************************************************************************************ today = new Date() month = today.getMonth() + 1 year = today.getFullYear() selectedDate = new Date("01/01/1900") selectedContent = "" varLength = 503 var entryDate = new Array(varLength) var entryContent = new Array(varLength) entryDate[0] = " 01/01/" + year entryContent[0] = "

\"Begin again fresh and new
when the year turns to become
green again and young.\"

~To Become Green Again and Young~ Lorna Goodison
Happy New Year!

Happy Independence Day, Haiti!

" entryDate[1] = " 01/02/" + year entryContent[1] = " \"i’m a hands woman
love me some hands
love to take his large fingers between my palms
and suck on the tip of each one
just before i walk away.\"

~Caribbean Passion~ Opal Palmer Adisa" entryDate[2] = " 01/03/" + year entryContent[2] = "  \"And somewhere en el Barrio
two hands play a distant clave.\"

~Cantos to Blood & Honey~ Adrian Castro" entryDate[3] = " 01/04/" + year entryContent[3] = " \"Any man who tries to do for his people what Englishmen are so proud that other Englishmen have done for them, immediately becomes in the eyes of the Colonial Englishman a dangerous person, a wild revolutionary, a man with no respect for law and order.\"

~The Life of Captain Cipriani: An Account of British Government in the West Indies~ CLR James

Happy Birthday, CLR James" entryDate[4] = " 01/05/" + year entryContent[4] = " \"The road unwinds like a ball of twine.
A crude zigzag pulled by teeth
from flour bag seams.\"

~Roseau--The Forgotten Village~McDonald Dixon" entryDate[5] = " 01/06/" + year entryContent[5] = " \"Cuba is a white horse galloping,
galloping from the shore to a distant palm grove.\"

~I Could Say~ Jesus Cos Causse
" entryDate[6] = " 01/07/" + year entryContent[6] = "

\"tasting
And feeling her kisses on bright sunbathed days
I must always be remembering the sea.\"

~Hymn to the Sea~ Frank Collymore


Happy Birthday, Frank Collymore!

" entryDate[7] = " 01/08/" + year entryContent[7] = " \"It must be in all nature
To desire a death-in-life existence--
As we, shrouded on the foliage of passion,
Seek evanescent joy that
Must only end in death.\"

~Parasite~ Hazel Simmons-McDonald
" entryDate[8] = " 01/09/" + year entryContent[8] = " \"beneath the night of empty talk, caught in words,
a canoe is waiting to leave
in the parting, filled with truth from this life.\"

~Child of a New Tide~ Edgar Cairo
" entryDate[9] = " 01/10/" + year entryContent[9] = " \"But their souls shuttle
still the forest paths of ocean
connecting us still the current unbroken
the circuits kept open, the tireless messengers
the ebony princes of your lost Atlantis
a power of black men rising from the sea.\"

~Sometimes in the Middle of the Story~ Edward Baugh

Happy Birthday, Edward Baugh
" entryDate[10] = " 01/11/" + year entryContent[10] = "  \"The sap of this story is not sacred nectar,
the feeling it gives holds my mind in its grip\".

~Working all day, dreaming at night~ Jit Narain" entryDate[11] = " 01/12/" + year entryContent[11] = " \"Sun is a shapely fire turning in air
Fed by white springs
and earth’s a powerless sun.\"

~Sun is a Shapely Fire~ AJ Seymour

Happy Birthday, AJ Seymour

" entryDate[12] = " 01/13/" + year entryContent[12] = " \"the world was round and we the spices in it
time wheeled around our memories like stars.\"

~The visibilty trigger~ Kamau Brathwaite " entryDate[13] = " 01/14/" + year entryContent[13] = " \"the mute indifference of the stars, awake
like a shower of open, winking eyes\"

~Forbidden Fruit~ Luis Palés Matos

" entryDate[14] = " 01/15/" + year entryContent[14] = "  \"For burnished beauty nearer home.
Turn in the sun, my love, my love!\"

~Revelation~ H. A. Vaughn.


Happy Birthday, Grace Nichols

" entryDate[15] = " 01/16/" + year entryContent[15] = " \"After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky,
I wrote the tale by tallow of a city's death by fire;\"

~A City's Death by Fire~ Derek Walcott

" entryDate[16] = " 01/17/" + year entryContent[16] = " \"I am a murderer I wring words by the rough of their necks.\"

~Judge Dreadword~ Victor Questel
" entryDate[17] = " 01/18/" + year entryContent[17] = " \"I love those bars and taverns
by the sea
where people chat and drink
merely to drink and chat.\"

~Bars~ Nicolas Guillen
" entryDate[18] = " 01/19/" + year entryContent[18] = " \"I wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up, and this was, for the most part, poor people who had extraordinary dreams but also very amazing obstacles.\"

~Edwidge Danticat~
Happy Birthday, Edwidge!" entryDate[19] = " 01/20/" + year entryContent[19] = " Don't forget it, poet.
In whatever place and time
you make
or endure History,
there will always be lying in wait
some dangerous poem.
~Don't forget it, poet.~ Heberto Padilla

Happy Birthday, Heberto Padillo
" entryDate[20] = " 01/21/" + year entryContent[20] = " \"Where a wind in the sail is hope,
That long desire, and the long weariness fulfills--
Come again to the hills.\"

~All Men Come to the Hills~ Roger Mais
" entryDate[21] = " 01/22/" + year entryContent[21] = " \"Some things I have to say aren't getting said
in this snowy, blond, blue-eyed, gum-chewing English.\"

~Bilingual Sestina~ Julia Alvarez" entryDate[22] = " 01/23/" + year entryContent[22] = "

\"On my first trip to the Modern I turned a corner,
rooted before the ridged linen of a Cèzanne.

A still life. I thought how clean his brushes were!
Across that distance light was my first lesson.\"

~Tieoplo's Hound~ Derek Walcott


Happy Birthday, Derek Walcott

" entryDate[23] = " 01/24/" + year entryContent[23] = " \"After the tyranny
there are so few places to go
places to sing.\"

~Canto of the Tyrant who Hangs Himself~ Adrian Castro" entryDate[24] = " 01/25/" + year entryContent[24] = " \"A truck
Heavy laden
With bananas
Rounding the curve
Of the white road
Leaving dust
And noise\"

~Cameo~ Una Marson" entryDate[25] = " 01/26/" + year entryContent[25] = "  \"puddles of pigment
Bloom in the palette's wild small garden.\"

~Landscape Painter, Jamaica~ Vivian Virtue" entryDate[26] = " 01/27/" + year entryContent[26] = " \"In the crowd, I am
The anonymous passerby who swells the procession
The black drop that joins your wave.\"

~Here I Am Again, Harlem~ Jean Brierre" entryDate[27] = " 01/28/" + year entryContent[27] = " \" I have two mother countries: Cuba and the night.\"

~Dos Patrias~ Jose Marti

Happy Birthday, Jose Marti
" entryDate[28] = " 01/29/" + year entryContent[28] = " \"In our land
Poppies do not spring
From atoms of young blood.\"

~In Our Land~ Howard M. Telemaque
" entryDate[29] = " 01/30/" + year entryContent[29] = " \"Thank you for narrating the rage
of the people in the ravine
who were pushed down the grieving slide
and whose only continuing loss
is their long credit of patience.\"

~James Baldwin~ Andrew Salkey

Happy Birthday, Andrew Salkey
" entryDate[30] = " 01/31/" + year entryContent[30] = " \"Patterning myself whole, dreams coming
Alive across the ocean, a ship canting,
Land lifting up, the fumes yet in my nostrils
My body's own heat -
I continue to rise like yeast.\"

~My Sundry Life~ Cyril Dabydeen" entryDate[31] = " 02/01/" + year entryContent[31] = " \"I had no nation but the imagination\"

~The Schooner 'Flight'~ Derek Walcott
" entryDate[32] = " 02/02/" + year entryContent[32] = "

\"He flipped his hands. The knuckles are gnarled,
Bruised, swollen. Tendons welded to the wrist
Stand in a bed of tall veins, his curled
Fingers form a huge hammer for a fist.\"

~Bloodlines~ Fred D'Aguiar


Happy Birthday, Fred!

" entryDate[33] = " 02/03/" + year entryContent[33] = " \"Even as the murmuring
sea unwraps and wraps its arms
in turn around each dead, loved thing
and the gesture may be fruitless, but is made.\"

~The Witness~ Wayne Brown" entryDate[34] = " 02/04/" + year entryContent[34] = " Happy Birthday, John Hearne" entryDate[35] = " 02/05/" + year entryContent[35] = "

\"We're gonna dance to Jah music, yeah
Forget your sorrows and dance
Forget your troubles and dance
Forget your sickness and dance
Forget your weariness and dance.\"

~Dem Belly Full (But We Hungry)~Bob Marley


Happy Birthday, Brother Bob!

" entryDate[36] = " 02/06/" + year entryContent[36] = " Out in the yard turning gray in the dawn,
I stood like a stone and nothing else move
but the cold sea rippling like galvanize
and the nail holes of stars in the sky roof,
till a wind start to interfere with the trees.
I pass me dry neighbor sweeping she yard
as I went downhill, and I nearly said:
\"Sweep soft, you witch, 'cause she don't sleep hard,\"
but the bitch look through me like I was dead.\"

~The Schooner 'Flight'~ Derek Walcott
" entryDate[37] = " 02/07/" + year entryContent[37] = " \"I knew when dark-haired evening put on
her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea,
sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh
that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting.\"

~The Schooner Flight~ Derek Walcott
" entryDate[38] = " 02/08/" + year entryContent[38] = " \"Do you feel my pain
This anguish like none other
From taming with the words of France
This heart that came to me from Senegal?\"

~Betrayal~ Leon Laleau
" entryDate[39] = " 02/09/" + year entryContent[39] = " \"Like a woman whose charm
Masks valour and passion
In your modesty, you want your tears
To adorn your rags with pearls.\"

~Would I Deny?~ Marie-Magdeleine Carbet" entryDate[40] = " 02/10/" + year entryContent[40] = " Happy Birthday, Michael Anthony

" entryDate[41] = " 02/11/" + year entryContent[41] = " \"Any literature is an attempt to portray yourself, to situate yourself in the world, to define yourself in relationship to others and to yourself. People don’t write for any other reason. Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is probably the most beautiful search for self and one’s milieu that has ever existed. Since I deal with another historical era, Veronica’s search is different from Proust’s. If people knew themselves, they would not write. There is not one novelist for whom “I” is a given entity. You have to explain, elucidate, and journey through that “I” Whether it is written by Whites or Blacks, English or Chinese, literature is a search for self, an effort to elucidate oneself.\"
~Maryse Conde to Francoise Pfaff~

Happy Birthday, Marsye Conde

" entryDate[42] = " 02/12/" + year entryContent[42] = " \"At first, there's a thin, bright Rider --
he doesn't stop at the supermarket, the cool
red meats are not to his taste.
He steals from the tin on the tenement table,
he munches seed from the land
where no rain has fallen, he feeds
in the gutter behind my house.
the bread is covered with sores
when he eats it; the children
have painted his face on their bellies.\"

~Apocalypse Dub~ Dennis Scott" entryDate[43] = " 02/13/" + year entryContent[43] = " \"my brother
what are you looking for throughout these forests
of horns and hooves of wings of horses
all punctuate things
all bipunctuate things.\"

~Wilfredo Lam~ Aimé Césaire " entryDate[44] = " 02/14/" + year entryContent[44] = "

It is wanting to hear the lisp
of the sea, curled on the tongues of passersby.
It is wanting to smell the wind, heavy
with rain, wrap itself in the skirts of trees.
It is wanting to see the sun slide
down banana leaves into the thighs of a valley.
It is wanting to taste beads of tamarind
that drip from terraced hillsides.
It is wanting to feel the pulp of star-apple,
its dark flesh, moist between my hands.
It is, it is wanting you.

~Exile~ Geoffrey Philp


Happy Valentine's Day

" entryDate[45] = " 02/15/" + year entryContent[45] = "

\"She teases with those flashes, yes, but once
you yield to human horniness, you see
through all that moonshine what they really were,
those gods as seed-bulls, gods as rutting swans
an overheated farmhand's literature.\"


~Europa~ Derek Walcott

" entryDate[46] = " 02/16/" + year entryContent[46] = " \"Why? She kept asking herself as she made her way to Clark Street, slouching in her skirt through shaded streets. Her pace slowed with each succeeding step, as if the convoy of fellow professionals that trundled by were tapping her strength. Why? Why? Why? The rest of the question refused to be drawn into her mind until she entered the elevator at the subway station. There, compacted in the steel cage that lowered is passengers through the bedrock like old South African miners, she felt the weight of those around her forcing the thought through her intestines, into her belly, up into her throat, to coat the roof of her mouth. Why didn’t he call me? Even just to say goodbye.

She wanted to talk to him. Now. Desperately. About what, she didn’t know.\"

~Waiting in Vain~ Colin Channer" entryDate[47] = " 02/17/" + year entryContent[47] = " \"Rain fell, the drops split
through the screens, landed
on his hair like glass beads
strung on needles.\"

~Guitarra~ Marisella Veiga" entryDate[48] = " 02/18/" + year entryContent[48] = " \"in this beautiful mosaic of madness
this melting pot of blackeyed peas
and lynchropes,
fried plantains and burning crosses,
blood-puddings and blood-baths....
I am familiar with the fetid smell of fear
it invades our bodies
seeps out of our pores
congeals the blood\"

~Snapshots, Headlines and Clippings~ Donna Weir-Soley" entryDate[49] = " 02/19/" + year entryContent[49] = " \"And somewhere en el Barrio
two hands play a distant clave.\"

~Cantos to Blood & Honey~ Adrian Castro " entryDate[50] = " 02/20/" + year entryContent[50] = " \"The sap of this story is not sacred nectar,
the feeling it gives holds my mind in its grip.\"

~Working all day, dreaming at night~ Jit Narain" entryDate[51] = " 02/21/" + year entryContent[51] = "

\"I blow the sounds, the pain,
but not a soul
would come inside my world
or tell me how it true.\"

~Valley Prince~ Mervyn Morris


Happy Birthday, Mervyn!

" entryDate[52] = " 02/22/" + year entryContent[52] = " \"the mute indifference of the stars, awake
like a shower of open, winking eyes.\"

~Forbidden Fruit~ Luis Pales Matos" entryDate[53] = " 02/23/" + year entryContent[53] = " \"I love those bars and taverns
by the sea
where people chat and drink
merely to drink and chat.\"

~Bars~ Nicolas Guillen" entryDate[54] = " 02/24/" + year entryContent[54] = " \"Where a wind in the sail is hope,
That long desire, and the long weariness fulfills--
Come again to the hills\"

~All Men Come to the Hills~ Roger Mais
" entryDate[55] = " 02/25/" + year entryContent[55] = " Happy Birthday, Tony Winkler

" entryDate[56] = " 02/26/" + year entryContent[56] = " \"In a tinderbox frame, the light leaks
through gaps in the rotting panels
and salt air from the sea and brackish river
softens the collected folders until they green and bleed
into the wood.\"

~Requiem~ Kwame Dawes" entryDate[57] = " 02/27/" + year entryContent[57] = " \"Love is Earth's mission
despite the massed dead.\"

~Chinese Lanterns from the Blue Child~ Anthony McNeill" entryDate[58] = " 02/28/" + year entryContent[58] = " \"Let the sea repeat,
unwatched
its long, salt hymn.\"

~After-Image~ Dennis Scott" entryDate[59] = " 02/29/" + year entryContent[59] = " \"I write a poem
And feel
That my poem can create
Can awaken
Change.\"

~The Next Poems~ Mutabaruka" entryDate[60] = " 03/01/" + year entryContent[60] = " \"Love for an island is the sternest passion
pulsing beyond the blood of roots and loam.\"

~Love for an Island~ Phyllis Shand Allfrey
" entryDate[61] = " 03/02/" + year entryContent[61] = " \"Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day.\"

~The Harlem Dancer~ Claude McKay" entryDate[62] = " 03/03/" + year entryContent[62] = " \"After the tyranny
there are so few places to go
places to sing.\"

~Canto of the Tyrant who Hangs Himself~ Adrian Castro
" entryDate[63] = " 03/04/" + year entryContent[63] = " \"Dragon's teeth still rattle under root
And under stone the cold snake's coiled sleep
Rapt in its murderous sleep.\"

~The World of Islands~ Eric Roach" entryDate[64] = " 03/05/" + year entryContent[64] = " When last I looked it had
no leaves, was stiff and white
with frost.

Now green leaves and brown berries toss,
toss and bob in the whipping wind\"

~This Tree My Timekeeper~ John Figueroa" entryDate[65] = " 03/06/" + year entryContent[65] = " \"He looked at her and saw her naked to her waist, just as he had imagined her. Her shoulders were wrinkled, her breasts sagged, her ribs were covered by a flabby skin as pale and cold as a frog’s.\"

~Love in a Time of Cholera~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Happy Birthday, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
" entryDate[66] = " 03/07/" + year entryContent[66] = " \"the bats stipple the soft evening with little cries\".

~The City~ Saint-John Perse
" entryDate[67] = " 03/08/" + year entryContent[67] = " \"I know
like Grandmama the virtues
of a long stout knife
And I am loose, uncertified.\"

~Certifiable~ Pam Mordecai
" entryDate[68] = " 03/09/" + year entryContent[68] = " \"Knowing that at the end
Death will acknowledge no identities
i can only half believe
in heroes, villains, histories.\"

~Night Vision~ Kendel Hippolyte
" entryDate[69] = " 03/10/" + year entryContent[69] = " \"the hat-brim across the oval
of her face. It balances everything
the twin astonishments
of love and loss that light her face.\"

~Tales From the Rain Forest~ Edward Baugh
" entryDate[70] = " 03/11/" + year entryContent[70] = "

\"She was a young woman who was pretty in an odd way. Her lovely blond hair hidden under a sombre hood fuzzed up and formed a luminous halo around her head. She was wrapped in shawls and blankets as though she were shivering despite the warm, stuffy air in the cabin. She smiled at me and in a voice as pleasant as the waters of the River Ormond she said: so you're Tituba? How cruel it must be to be separated from your own family. From your father, your mother, and your people.'\" 

~Tituba, Black Witch of Salem ~ Maryse Conde

Happy Birthday, Maryse Conde

" entryDate[71] = " 03/12/" + year entryContent[71] = " She could work miracles, she
would make a garment from a
square of cloth in a span that
defied time. Or feed twenty
people on a stew made from
fallen-from-the-head cabbage
leaves and cho-cho and a palmful
of meat...\"

~For My Mother (May I Inherit Half Her Strength)~ Lorna Goodison
" entryDate[72] = " 03/13/" + year entryContent[72] = " \"Why do I write? Because it is a way of organizing my feelings about myself and the world around me. Without writing I fear I may metamorphose into something unpleasant. Writing feeds me literally and metaphorically. Writing provides a means by which I can sit in judgement upon myself and reach conclusions (however temporary) that enable me to shuffle towards the next day and another crisis.
And then, of course, there is the technical challenge of writing. To say what I have to say, and to hope to say it in the most incisive manner. To strive towards this goal, and fail honestly, yet continue to strive. To aspire to purify the language; to desire to sharpen the blade of narrative clarity, and then strike quick unseen blows. For me, writing is all of this.
And when (if) the writing no longer comes perhaps the journey will have showered me with enough knowledge so that my spirit can rest peacefully. But I doubt it.\"

~Caryl Phillips~

Happy Birthday,Caryl Phillips

Happy Birthday, Felix Morisseau-Leroy

" entryDate[73] = " 03/14/" + year entryContent[73] = " \"I longed to savor
its smoothness, the taste
of cedar caskets, rust,
seared the aureoles of my tongue
and rope of my throat,
to the pit of my spine,
embracing the darkness
like bats drink twilight
in their mastery of air;\"

~John Crow Batty~ Geoffrey Philp

Happy Birthday, Geoffrey Philp
" entryDate[74] = " 03/15/" + year entryContent[74] = " \"In those times, she says, in October
tenth month of the year
the O in the ten would become an opening
a funnel through which rain would pour.\"

~Notes from my Mother's Village Before the Village got Light~ Lorna Goodison" entryDate[75] = " 03/16/" + year entryContent[75] = " \"Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?\"

~A Far Cry From Africa~ Derek Walcott" entryDate[76] = " 03/17/" + year entryContent[76] = " \"Is music, then, a balcony
from which a shuffling of passings
is surmised, or is it
mortar and archway, or must it be
inkling, maestro, a suspicion
of survivals?\"

~Isla de Corcho~ Ricardo Pau-Llosa" entryDate[77] = " 03/18/" + year entryContent[77] = " \"first strain sunlight through avocado leaves
then pour into a dim country kitchen through bare
windows on a wooden table freshly scrubbed.\"

~Child this is the gospel on bakes~ Claire Harris" entryDate[78] = " 03/19/" + year entryContent[78] = " \"Beneath a canopy of gree crowns of mora trees
Shadows gather except where float tall pillars
Of thick golden light that sets the green dark shining.\"

~Forest Path, Nightfall~ Ian McDonald" entryDate[79] = " 03/20/" + year entryContent[79] = " \"the mute indifference of the stars, awake
like a shower of open, winking eyes\"

~Forbidden Fruit~ Luis Palés Matos

Happy Birthday, Luis Palés Matos

" entryDate[80] = " 03/21/" + year entryContent[80] = " \"the world was round and we the spices in it
time wheeled around our memories like stars.\"

~The visibilty trigger~ Kamau Brathwaite" entryDate[81] = " 03/22/" + year entryContent[81] = "  \"Knowing that at the end
Death will acknowledge no identities
i can only half believe
in heroes, villains, histories.\"

~Night Vision~ Kendel Hippolyte" entryDate[82] = " 03/23/" + year entryContent[82] = " Happy Birthday, Walter Rodney

" entryDate[83] = " 03/24/" + year entryContent[83] = " \"The tremendous voyage between two worlds
is contained in every hollow shell, in every name that echoes
a nameless bell.\"

~Behring Straits~ Wilson Harris.

Happy Birthday, Wilson Harris
" entryDate[84] = " 03/25/" + year entryContent[84] = " \"That bright day, the light
like clusters of gold fruit, alone, unknown
of any, the dugout and I fled the shore's burning beauty.\"

~Arawak Prologue~ Basil McFarlane." entryDate[85] = " 03/26/" + year entryContent[85] = " \"May these dead lighters resurrect you
As the poet dips his tiny paddle
In sea-blue ink\"

~Lighters~ Bruce St. John
" entryDate[86] = " 03/27/" + year entryContent[86] = "

\"I can see the drifting offshore lights,
black posts where the pelicans brood..\"

~Working Late~ Louis Simpson


Happy Birthday, Louis Simpson


Happy Birthday, Julia Alvarez

" entryDate[87] = " 03/28/" + year entryContent[87] = " \"You say no one arrives back
for the breath once mixed becomes
an eternal entaglement.\"

~Cut-Way Feelins~ James Berry
" entryDate[88] = " 03/29/" + year entryContent[88] = " \"Happiness is
sitting in one's own chair, in one's own living room
and shelling green gungo from one's own backyard tree\"

~Shelling Gungo Peas~ Gloria Escoffery
" entryDate[89] = " 03/30/" + year entryContent[89] = " \"I praise the legends we made
When the drunk hawks and worse were merry
Waltzed up the day
Haloed the mountains of birds and the nestling curve of the reeling river

~Acceptance~ Neville Dawes
" entryDate[90] = " 03/31/" + year entryContent[90] = " \"and if at times I bawl my suffering
it's because my toe is caught
under the boot of others.\"

~Ghetto~ Guy Tirolien" entryDate[91] = " 04/01/" + year entryContent[91] = " \"There were flowers dancing
on the carpet
as the trade winds
whispered through my house
caressing our sapodilla skins.\"

~The Visit~ Nydia Ecury
" entryDate[92] = " 04/02/" + year entryContent[92] = " \"Then
when the sun lit up the leaves and
the road was a shining, twisting ribbon,
making up time for the bell.\"

~Cameo~ Cecil Gray" entryDate[93] = " 04/03/" + year entryContent[93] = " \"You still don't understand
how a victim is as guilty as accomplice.\"

~Letter to My Father from London~ James Berry
" entryDate[94] = " 04/04/" + year entryContent[94] = " \"But no-one will say
If the agave still blooms on Long Mountain
Or if the market woman hills, swinging blue hips down the plain
Still sweat their springs
And smell of ginger lilies.\"

~When They Come from the Island~ Barbara Ferland" entryDate[95] = " 04/05/" + year entryContent[95] = " \"A woman is alone. She believes everything to be nothing
And no one speaks to her
of the joy and sorrow to be found
in the blood that leaps, that flows,
in the blood which nourishes or dies of death.\"

~A Woman Alone~ Aida Cartagena Portalatin
" entryDate[96] = " 04/06/" + year entryContent[96] = " \"From the pothole's asphalt vase
a sprig of red hibiscus waves
the traffic off.
A Honda rider,
knees splayed, grinning his route
through black self-generated air
floats his teeth across the windscreen
of the car in hot pursuit
of someone he desires or despises
more than us, the butt
of a revolver tucked into
his belt under the billowing shirt.\"

~Death of a Honda Rider~ Ralph C. Thompson" entryDate[97] = " 04/07/" + year entryContent[97] = " \"There is a desperation
about women waiting
to show
anxious to bare their budding
secrets
to reveal the knowledge
of mystic metamorphosis;\"

~Late Blooming~ Patricia Turnbull" entryDate[98] = " 04/08/" + year entryContent[98] = " \"Was it the idea of separation,
the way the onyx seeds hung
on like a useless chandelier's
teardrop, glass reflections
of your exiled life in Miami?\"

~For my Uncle who Wept Every Time he Sliced a Papaya in Half\"~ Virgil Suarez" entryDate[99] = " 04/09/" + year entryContent[99] = " \"The highway's geometric lines
are lost on entering here,
and the road narrows, easing down
into fields so thick with green
the mind dips and whorls
from a morning resplendent in light,
as you drive to discover your landscape.\"

~A Drive Through Green~ Jennifer Rahim " entryDate[100] = " 04/10/" + year entryContent[100] = " \"You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart. \"

~Love After Love~ Derek Walcott" entryDate[101] = " 04/11/" + year entryContent[101] = "

\"Mangroves, their wrists in water, walked with the canoe.
The swift, racing its browner shadow, screeched, then veered
into a dark inlet. It was the last sound Achille knew

from the other world. He feathered the paddle, steered
away from the groping mangroves whose muddy shelves
slipped warted crocodiles, slitting the pods of their eyes;

~Omeros~ Derek Walcott

" entryDate[102] = " 04/12/" + year entryContent[102] = " \"This April is so hot. Hungry
for mischief the devil is cooking
a pot of hurricanes prematurely
to obeah this green island.\"

~Easter~ Howard Fergus" entryDate[103] = " 04/13/" + year entryContent[103] = " \"Those are wrinkling worms on wavetops
Celebrating sword-glints on water bubbies
Here a moment
Singing the next
Down ages of appreciation.\"

~Demerary Telepathy~ Sasenarine Persaud" entryDate[104] = " 04/14/" + year entryContent[104] = " \"So mi jook one in him eye and him started fi cry
me thump him pon him mout and him started fi shout
me kick him pon him shin so him started fi spin
me hit him pon him chin an him drop pon a bin
- an crash, an dead\"

~Sonny's Lettah~ Linton Kwesi Johnson" entryDate[105] = " 04/15/" + year entryContent[105] = "  \"Growing up in Miami I never heard his name,
my aunts hissing comunista, his image cut
from photos, letters torn. “Fool, let him eat swill
in paradise,” Uncle Manny would say as he
bit ripe tomatoes like apples, dimple dripping.\"

~Elegy for Great-Uncle Julio, Cane Cutter (Marti Sugar Mill, Matanzas, Cuba)~ Orlando Menes" entryDate[106] = " " entryContent[106] = " " entryDate[107] = " 04/16/" + year entryContent[107] = " \"When the stone fall that morning out of the johncrow sky
it was not dark at first . that opening on to the red sea humming
but something in my mouth like feathers .  blue like bubbles
carrying signals & planets & the sliding curve of the
world like a water pic. ture in a raindrop when the pressure. drop\"

~Stone~ Kamau Brathwaite" entryDate[108] = " " entryContent[108] = " " entryDate[109] = " 04/17/" + year entryContent[109] = " Happy Birthday, Dany Laferriere
" entryDate[110] = " " entryContent[110] = " " entryDate[111] = " 04/18/" + year entryContent[111] = " \"Then we would go off across the city
Carrying in our hearts, full of silent sobs,
The bitter burden of unspoken words
And the empty pride of having kept our pain.\"

~Encounter~ Marie Therese Colimon" entryDate[112] = " " entryContent[112] = " " entryDate[113] = " 04/19/" + year entryContent[113] = " \"Dragon's teeth still rattle under root
And under stone the cold snake's coiled sleep
Rapt in its murderous sleep.\"

~The World of Islands~ Eric Roach" entryDate[114] = " " entryContent[114] = " " entryDate[115] = " 04/20/" + year entryContent[115] = " Happy Birthday, Erna Brodber

" entryDate[116] = " " entryContent[116] = " " entryDate[117] = " 04/21/" + year entryContent[117] = " \"i’m a hands woman
love me some hands
love to take his large fingers between my palms
and suck on the tip of each one
just before i walk away\"

~Caribbean Passion~ Opal Palmer Adisa" entryDate[118] = " " entryContent[118] = " " entryDate[119] = " 04/22/" + year entryContent[119] = " \"My first memories, for example, are about movies and music—specifically, the words of Cuban songs, like the boleros, from the thirties and the forties, a whole gamut of South American songs, Mexican songs, and North American music. These have always been very important to me. In fact, I have said that I like one line from a song by the Chilean Lucho Gatica more than all of Neruda’s poetry. I won’t say I like it more than all the poetry of Gabriela Mistral so as not to offend your sensibilities. That masterful line, which Gatica used to sing in 1957, is from a song called “La barca” (The Boat), and it went something like this: “Ya mi barca tiene que partir. Voy a navegar por otros mares de locura” (My boat is about to leave. I must sail through other seas of madness). This is an extraordinary poetic find, and I have used this phrase repeatedly, it is something of a leitmotiv with me, unlike any of Neruda’s verses.\"
~G. Cabrera Infante~


Happy Birthday, G. Cabrera Infante
" entryDate[120] = " " entryContent[120] = " " entryDate[121] = " 04/23/" + year entryContent[121] = " \"Cuba is a white horse galloping,
galloping from the shore to a distant palm grove.\"

~I Could Say~ Jesus Cos Causse" entryDate[122] = " " entryContent[122] = " " entryDate[123] = " 04/24/" + year entryContent[123] = "
\"the streets’ root is in the sea
in the deep
harbours

it is a long way from Guineé


~Born to Slow Horses~ Kamau Brathwaite" entryDate[124] = " " entryContent[124] = " " entryDate[125] = " 04/25/" + year entryContent[125] = " \"It must be in all nature
To desire a death-in-life existence--
As we, shrouded on the foliage of passion,
Seek evanescent joy that
Must only end in death.\"

~Parasite~ Hazel Simmons-McDonald
" entryDate[126] = " " entryContent[126] = " " entryDate[127] = " 04/26/" + year entryContent[127] = " \"beneath the night of empty talk, caught in words,
a canoe is waiting to leave
in the parting, filled with truth from this life.\"

~Child of a New Tide~ Edgar Cairo" entryDate[128] = " " entryContent[128] = " " entryDate[129] = " 04/27/" + year entryContent[129] = " \"And somewhere en el Barrio
two hands play a distant clave.\"

~Cantos to Blood & Honey~ Adrian Castro" entryDate[130] = " " entryContent[130] = " " entryDate[131] = " 04/28/" + year entryContent[131] = "  \"I love those bars and taverns
by the sea
where people chat and drink
merely to drink and chat.\"

~Bars~ Nicolas Guillen" entryDate[132] = " " entryContent[132] = " " entryDate[133] = " 04/29/" + year entryContent[133] = " \"When the air is a sharpened blade,
cutting nostrils clean like cutlass steel,
the bush planters pass the sleeping houses
(sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs).
They lumber up the mountain road;
their tall tops pounding the asphalt smooth.\"

~The Felling of a Tree~ Jennifer Rahim" entryDate[134] = " " entryContent[134] = " " entryDate[135] = " 04/30/" + year entryContent[135] = " \"Patterning myself whole, dreams coming
Alive across the ocean, a ship canting,
Land lifting up, the fumes yet in my nostrils
My body's own heat -
I continue to rise like yeast.\"

~My Sundry Life~ Cyril Dabydeen" entryDate[136] = " " entryContent[136] = " " entryDate[137] = " 05/01/" + year entryContent[137] = " Happy Birthday, VS Reid

" entryDate[138] = " " entryContent[138] = " " entryDate[139] = " 05/02/" + year entryContent[139] = " \"Let me do this living while I can,
let me make some meaning while I can,
let me get far from Nothing while I can,
let me know this movement while I can
let me move these fingers, while I still can.\"

~Doing the Rhumba~ Kevyn Alan Arthur" entryDate[140] = " " entryContent[140] = " " entryDate[141] = " 05/03/" + year entryContent[141] = " \"When my thoughts are a tangle I cannot untie
When meanings are lost and I cannot say why
When the day to day drudging is exhausting not fulfilling
When a hollow space inside says I'm existing not living
Those days, mother
When life is a circle that keeps me spinning \"

~Somedays Mother~ Merle Collins" entryDate[142] = " " entryContent[142] = " " entryDate[143] = " 05/04/" + year entryContent[143] = " \"gods and spirits are summoned through the portal divine
i must share these with you\"

Ian Gregory Strachan " entryDate[144] = " " entryContent[144] = " " entryDate[145] = " 05/05/" + year entryContent[145] = " \"asking permission
to banish the myth
that I best bear sorrow
in the tallow of my body
bountiful in recovery
to be free from fixations
that commend me and degrade me
disrepect me in respect
mock me with praise, canonize
iconize, idealize, immortalize
treating me worse than the enemy
mark me as martyr
impale me in literature
climbing down my rockstone

for mine is
the power
the glory
to live\"

~Woman Desendant~ Cynthia James" entryDate[146] = " " entryContent[146] = " " entryDate[147] = " 05/06/" + year entryContent[147] = " \"The land belongs to no one
if not to us.
We ride deep into the mahoganies
and out to a valley splashed with royal palms,
through a tangle of coffee trees,
across the river and
up the stones to the mountain peak.\"

~El Cimarron or the Runaway Slave~ Carolina Hospital" entryDate[148] = " " entryContent[148] = " " entryDate[149] = " 05/07/" + year entryContent[149] = " \"So you have seen them
with their cardboard grips,
felt hats, rain-cloaks, the women
with their plain
or purple-tinted
coats hiding their fatten-
ed hips\"

~Emigrants~ Kamau Brathwaite" entryDate[150] = " " entryContent[150] = " " entryDate[151] = " 05/08/" + year entryContent[151] = " \"But best is this night surf
with slow scriptures of sand,
that sends, not quite a seraph,
but a late cormorant,

whose fading cry propels
through phosphorescent shoal
what, in my childhood gospels,
used to be called the Soul.\"

~Pentecost~ Derek Walcott" entryDate[152] = " " entryContent[152] = " " entryDate[153] = " 05/09/" + year entryContent[153] = " \"From your second floor apartment
with its cathedral ceilings,
an herb garden
and dusty first editions,
I step out into
a Christmas card
with its snow covered walkway
leading to a yellow shingled house and
a red mailbox, empty.\"

~First Snows~ Carolina Hospital" entryDate[154] = " " entryContent[154] = " " entryDate[155] = " 05/10/" + year entryContent[155] = " \"So mi jook one in him eye and him started fi cry
me thump him pon him mout and him started fi shout
me kick him pon him shin so him started fi spin
me hit him pon him chin an him drop pon a bin
- an crash, an dead\"

~Sonny's Lettah~ Linton Kwesi Johnson " entryDate[156] = " " entryContent[156] = " " entryDate[157] = " 05/11/" + year entryContent[157] = " \"Let the sea repeat
unwatched, its long, salt hymn.\"

~After Image~ Dennis Scott" entryDate[158] = " " entryContent[158] = " " entryDate[159] = " 05/12/" + year entryContent[159] = " \"Poets find roses in your subtleties,
wine in your complexities,
wind in your abstractions.

In you, I find
a tight lid I can't pry open;
a wet match on a dark night;
a hollow kiss.\"

~Language~ Carolina Hospital" entryDate[160] = " " entryContent[160] = " " entryDate[161] = " 05/13/" + year entryContent[161] = " \"Growing up in Miami I never heard his name,
my aunts hissing comunista, his image cut
from photos, letters torn. “Fool, let him eat swill
in paradise,” Uncle Manny would say as he
bit ripe tomatoes like apples, dimple dripping.\"

~Elegy for Great-Uncle Julio, Cane Cutter (Marti Sugar Mill, Matanzas, Cuba)~ Orlando Menes" entryDate[162] = " " entryContent[162] = " " entryDate[163] = " 05/14/" + year entryContent[163] = " \"So with the sun just disappearing beneath the glittering sea, all the sky above them painted a brilliant crimson, Iwana and Anaconda could make love to each other at last. And the next morning, Anaconda taught her the trick of how to change she shape. Iwana became iguana. Then Anaconda changed to he serpent self too, both of them climbing down from the giant kapok tree. They disappeared inside the forest where they have lived happy together to this very day.\"

~The Tale of How Iguana Got Her Wrinkles Or The True Tale of El Dorado~ Robert Antoni" entryDate[164] = " " entryContent[164] = " " entryDate[165] = " 05/15/" + year entryContent[165] = " \"The name of the city
says what it is
smoke on cold days, how it reels
under bright sunlight.\"

~The Name~ Mervyn Taylor
" entryDate[166] = " " entryContent[166] = " " entryDate[167] = " 05/16/" + year entryContent[167] = " \"Lawd God
I tired fe hear it
I tired fe hear it
so till.
All dem big talk:
'Women are our natural resources
Women are the backbone
of this country'\"

~Elsa's Version~ Christine Craig" entryDate[168] = " " entryContent[168] = " " entryDate[169] = " 05/17/" + year entryContent[169] = "

"Man, mek me tell yu dat was a fete
Riddim was wile, an de dawta dem a grine
De idren dem a smoke de sweetes lamb s bret
Straight from St. Ann's, de bes colly we cud fine.
Security did tight, yu cudn even see a rachet
Fa de local top ranking stan up broad by de gate
Till one fool-fool rumhead decide fe chuck a yute,
Bwai, me never see one man eat so much bullet."

~Dancehall~ Geoffrey Philp

" entryDate[170] = " " entryContent[170] = " " entryDate[171] = " 05/18/" + year entryContent[171] = " \"Here is another part of the wood.
On a morning before we were born,
or later in the day, the year,
the thing we strive to recall
broke the tranquility of this place. \"

~Towards the End of a Century~ E. A. Markham" entryDate[172] = " " entryContent[172] = " " entryDate[173] = " 05/19/" + year entryContent[173] = " \"The current on shingle
was pure whispers I spelled
out, which spelt his name.
Step forward Columbus.\"

~1492~ Fred D'Aguiar
" entryDate[174] = " " entryContent[174] = " " entryDate[175] = " 05/20/" + year entryContent[175] = " Happy Birthday, Sam Selvon

" entryDate[176] = " " entryContent[176] = " " entryDate[177] = " 05/21/" + year entryContent[177] = " \"The tremendous voyage between two worlds
is contained in every hollow shell, in every name that echoes
a nameless bell.\"

~Behring Straits~ Wilson Harris" entryDate[178] = " " entryContent[178] = " " entryDate[179] = " 05/22/" + year entryContent[179] = " \"May these dead lighters resurrect you
As the poet dips his tiny paddle
In sea-blue ink\"

~Lighters~ Bruce St. John" entryDate[180] = " " entryContent[180] = " " entryDate[181] = " 05/23/" + year entryContent[181] = " \"Beneath a canopy of gree crowns of mora trees
Shadows gather except where float tall pillars
Of thick golden light that sets the green dark shining.\"

~Forest Path, Nightfall~ Ian McDonald" entryDate[182] = " " entryContent[182] = " " entryDate[183] = " 05/24/" + year entryContent[183] = " \"the world was round and we the spices in it
time wheeled around our memories like stars.\"

~The visibilty trigger~ Kamau Brathwaite" entryDate[184] = " " entryContent[184] = " " entryDate[185] = " 05/25/" + year entryContent[185] = " Happy Birthday, Jamaica Kincaid

" entryDate[186] = " " entryContent[186] = " " entryDate[187] = " 05/26/" + year entryContent[187] = " \"and if at times I bawl my suffering
it's because my toe is caught
under the boot of others.\"

~Ghetto~ Guy Tirolien" entryDate[188] = " " entryContent[188] = " " entryDate[189] = " 05/27/" + year entryContent[189] = " \"There were flowers dancing
on the carpet
as the trade winds
whispered through my house
caressing our sapodilla skins.\"

~The Visit~ Nydia Ecury" entryDate[190] = " " entryContent[190] = " " entryDate[191] = " 05/28/" + year entryContent[191] = " \"inhale the luscious guava scent
in the kitchen with the guava cheese bubbling
and me like a lady in waiting\"

~Florida and Other Places~ Jean Goulbourne " entryDate[192] = " " entryContent[192] = " " entryDate[193] = " 05/29/" + year entryContent[193] = " \"A woman is alone. She believes everything to be nothing
And no one speaks to her
of the joy and sorrow to be found
in the blood that leaps, that flows,
in the blood which nourishes or dies of death.\"

~A Woman Alone~ Aida Cartagena Portalatin" entryDate[194] = " " entryContent[194] = " " entryDate[195] = " 05/30/" + year entryContent[195] = " \"From the pothole's asphalt vase
a sprig of red hibiscus waves
the traffic off.
A Honda rider,
knees splayed, grinning his route
through black self-generated air
floats his teeth across the windscreen
of the car in hot pursuit
of someone he desires or despises
more than us, the butt
of a revolver tucked into
his belt under the billowing shirt.\"

~Death of a Honda Rider~ Ralph C. Thompson" entryDate[196] = " " entryContent[196] = " " entryDate[197] = " 05/31/" + year entryContent[197] = " Happy Birthday, Saint-John Perse

" entryDate[198] = " " entryContent[198] = " " entryDate[199] = " 06/01/" + year entryContent[199] = "

\"Thank you Dessalines,
Father Dessalines, thank you
When I realize who I am today
I say Thank you, Dessalines
Every time I hear a colonized Negro,
A Negro that is still captive of censorship
I say : Thank you, Father Dessalines \"

~Thank you, Father Dessalines~Félix Morisseau-Leroy

 

" entryDate[200] = " " entryContent[200] = " " entryDate[201] = " 06/02/" + year entryContent[201] = " \"Was it the idea of separation,
the way the onyx seeds hung
on like a useless chandelier's
teardrop, glass reflections
of your exiled life in Miami?\"

~For My Uncle Who Wept Every Time He Sliced a Papaya in Half\"~ Virgil Suarez" entryDate[202] = " " entryContent[202] = " " entryDate[203] = " 06/03/" + year entryContent[203] = "  \"Growing up in Miami I never heard his name,
my aunts hissing comunista, his image cut
from photos, letters torn. “Fool, let him eat swill
in paradise,” Uncle Manny would say as he
bit ripe tomatoes like apples, dimple dripping.\"

~Elegy For Great-Uncle Julio, Cane Cutter (Marti Sugar Mill, Matanzas, Cuba)~ Orlando Menes" entryDate[204] = " " entryContent[204] = " " entryDate[205] = " 06/04/" + year entryContent[205] = " \"when papa was killed
in a corner in the
streets of Haiti
he was just getting
juice for me to have
with dinner.\"

~Sawfish Soup~ Edwidge Danticat" entryDate[206] = " " entryContent[206] = " " entryDate[207] = " 06/05/" + year entryContent[207] = " Happy Birthday, Orlando Patterson

" entryDate[208] = " " entryContent[208] = " " entryDate[209] = " 06/06/" + year entryContent[209] = " \"When the stone fall that morning out of the johncrow sky
it was not dark at first . that opening on to the red sea humming
but something in my mouth like feathers .  blue like bubbles
carrying signals & planets & the sliding curve of the
world like a water pic. ture in a raindrop when the pressure. drop\"

~Stone~ Kamau Brathwaite" entryDate[210] = " " entryContent[210] = " " entryDate[211] = " 06/07/" + year entryContent[211] = " Happy Birthday, Martin Carter

" entryDate[212] = " " entryContent[212] = " " entryDate[213] = " 06/08/" + year entryContent[213] = " Happy Birthday, Michael Abbensetts


Happy Birthday, George Lamming

" entryDate[214] = " " entryContent[214] = " " entryDate[215] = " 06/09/" + year entryContent[215] = " \"Fresh footprint in the sand
Track of the asantewa
On Amina (Akamu) grain
Where bata steps in time
With the ageless bend of the river
Purple with Oshun's dye. .\"

~Awa/Ahwe~ Gene Emanuel" entryDate[216] = " " entryContent[216] = " " entryDate[217] = " 06/10/" + year entryContent[217] = " \"Dragon's teeth still rattle under root
And under stone the cold snake's coiled sleep
Rapt in its murderous sleep.\"

~The World of Islands~ Eric Roach" entryDate[218] = " " entryContent[218] = " " entryDate[219] = " 06/11/" + year entryContent[219] = " \"because we are all knots of a single stem
and our hungers and our dreams
sense each other through the same gestures and same
works.\"

~Meditation on the Shores of Evening~ Pedro Mir" entryDate[220] = " " entryContent[220] = " " entryDate[221] = " 06/12/" + year entryContent[221] = " \"Love is Earth's mission
despite the massed dead.\"

~Chinese Lanterns from the Blue Child~ Anthony McNeill" entryDate[222] = " " entryContent[222] = " " entryDate[223] = " 06/13/" + year entryContent[223] = " \"She could work miracles, she
would make a garment from a
square of cloth in a span that
defied time. Or feed twenty
people on a stew made from
fallen-from-the-head cabbage
leaves and cho-cho and a palmful
of meat...\"

~For My Mother (May I Inherit Half her Strength)~ Lorna Goodison
" entryDate[224] = " " entryContent[224] = " " entryDate[225] = " 06/14/" + year entryContent[225] = " \"Whether by shards of light, armied demarcations,
or the mounting poise of approaching city,
we are the beasts who do more than leave
our bones on the fiery earth.
And we alone can lower the blind upon it
as the clouds come gather again to shut
our sights and cool the urgent ground.\"

~Flight to L.A.~ Ricardo Pau-Llosa
" entryDate[226] = " " entryContent[226] = " " entryDate[227] = " 06/15/" + year entryContent[227] = " \"Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?\"

~A Far Cry From Africa~ Derek Walcott" entryDate[228] = " " entryContent[228] = " " entryDate[229] = " 06/16/" + year entryContent[229] = " Happy Birthday, Neville Dawes

" entryDate[230] = " " entryContent[230] = " " entryDate[231] = " 06/17/" + year entryContent[231] = " \"The day after the ex-servicemen's riots, my Uncle Theophilus and I made our way through the streets of Belize City. Groups of people were gathered on Albert Street, littered with glass from shattered, looted shop windows. Uncle Theo, recently returned to British Honduras from Egypt at the end of the World War I, had no sympathy for the British merchants. He believed they were hand in glove with the government..\"

~My Uncle Theophilus~ Zee Edgell" entryDate[232] = " " entryContent[232] = " " entryDate[233] = " 06/18/" + year entryContent[233] = " \"when papa was killed
in a corner in the
streets of Haiti
he was just getting
juice for me to have
with dinner.\"

~Sawfish Soup~ Edwidge Danticat" entryDate[234] = " " entryContent[234] = " " entryDate[235] = " 06/19/" + year entryContent[235] = " \"A woman lingered behind at the entrance to the private room allowing him time to see me, giving way to the barmaid's request and glowing, knowing stare. He came through the door to meet me and we leaned together against the wall and watched as the Jolly buses stopped and started as they slowly ground northwards in the after-rain muck of Orange Street. He smelled of white rum and grease and cheap perfume. His face was grave..\"

~Hartel~ Garfield Ellis" entryDate[236] = " " entryContent[236] = " " entryDate[237] = " 06/20/" + year entryContent[237] = " Happy Birthday, Aimé Césaire

" entryDate[238] = " " entryContent[238] = " " entryDate[239] = " 06/21/" + year entryContent[239] = " \"Sun glinted on its bright encircling brass, a small
version of the seawall bandstand elevated, held
up by a concrete red-and-white striped column, like a tall
bandsman in uniform topped by his tuba's shing bell.\"

~The Lighthouse~ Michael Gilkes" entryDate[240] = " " entryContent[240] = " " entryDate[241] = " 06/22/" + year entryContent[241] = " \"You may not know this yet
my son
I sense that you sense it.
Yet what we leave,
we carry.

~Not From Here~ John La Rose" entryDate[242] = " " entryContent[242] = " " entryDate[243] = " 06/23/" + year entryContent[243] = "  \"the bats stipple the soft evening with little cries.\"

~The City~ Saint-John Perse " entryDate[244] = " " entryContent[244] = " " entryDate[245] = " 06/24/" + year entryContent[245] = "  \"The stone had skidded arc'd and bloomed into islands:
Cuba and San Domingo
Jamaica and Puerto Rico
Grenada Guadeloupe Bonaire

curved stone hissed into reef
wave teeth fanged into clay
white splash flashed into spray
Bathsheba Montego Bay

bloom of the arcing summers...\"

~Calypso~ Kamau Brathwaite" entryDate[246] = " " entryContent[246] = " " entryDate[247] = " 06/25/" + year entryContent[247] = " \"I can see the drifting offshore lights,
black posts where the pelicans brood..\"

~Working Late~ Louis Simpson" entryDate[248] = " " entryContent[248] = " " entryDate[249] = " 06/26/" + year entryContent[249] = "  \"There were flowers dancing
on the carpet
as the trade winds
whispered through my house
caressing our sapodilla skins.\"

~The Visit~ Nydia Ecury
" entryDate[250] = " " entryContent[250] = " " entryDate[251] = " 06/27/" + year entryContent[251] = " Happy Birthday, Martin Carter

" entryDate[252] = " " entryContent[252] = " " entryDate[253] = " 06/28/" + year entryContent[253] = " \"I shall light
First debts to pay and fences to men,
lay to rest the wounded past, foes disguised as friends.\"

~I Shall Light a Candle of Understanding~ Lorna Goodison
" entryDate[254] = " " entryContent[254] = " " entryDate[255] = " 06/29/" + year entryContent[255] = " \"As the week went on we started to take a minute from shoveling
or unloading something on the hillside to stand and watch
the river, a half-mile below through a husk of cloud and rain.
Tuesday the water came up through the far fenceline. Wednesday

it crept over the pastures. Thursday it sifted through the holly grove,
soaked the lake. The rain didn't stop.
I woke in the middle of the night to hear it
running down the window by my bed. \"

~Lord, Plant my Feet on Higher ground~ Lorna Goodison" entryDate[256] = " " entryContent[256] = " " entryDate[257] = " 06/30/" + year entryContent[257] = " \"When my thoughts are a tangle I cannot untie
When meanings are lost and I cannot say why
When the day to day drudging is exhausting not fulfilling
When a hollow space inside says I'm existing not living
Those days, mother
When life is a circle that keeps me spinning \"

~Somedays Mother~ Merle Collins" entryDate[258] = " " entryContent[258] = " " entryDate[259] = " 07/01/" + year entryContent[259] = " \"Growing up in Miami I never heard his name,
my aunts hissing comunista, his image cut
from photos, letters torn. “Fool, let him eat swill
in paradise,” Uncle Manny would say as he
bit ripe tomatoes like apples, dimple dripping.\"

~Elegy for Great-Uncle Julio, Cane Cutter (Marti Sugar Mill, Matanzas, Cuba)~ Orlando Menes" entryDate[260] = " " entryContent[260] = " " entryDate[261] = " 07/02/" + year entryContent[261] = " \"Then we would go off across the city
Carrying in our hearts, full of silent sobs,
The bitter burden of unspoken words
And the empty pride of having kept our pain.\"

~Encounter~ Marie Therese Colimon" entryDate[262] = " " entryContent[262] = " " entryDate[263] = " 07/03/" + year entryContent[263] = "  \"It must be in all nature
To desire a death-in-life existence--
As we, shrouded on the foliage of passion,
Seek evanescent joy that
Must only end in death.\"

~Parasite~ Hazel Simmons-McDonald" entryDate[264] = " " entryContent[264] = " " entryDate[265] = " 07/04/" + year entryContent[265] = " \"They hanged him on a clement morning, swung
between the falling sunlight and the women's
breathing, like a black apostrophe to pain.
All morning while the children hushed
their hopscotch joy and the cane kept growing
he hung there sweet and low.\"

~Epitaph~ Dennis Scott" entryDate[266] = " " entryContent[266] = " " entryDate[267] = " 07/05/" + year entryContent[267] = " \"One room remains
and one small fretwork shard
among the rotted beams
ingrown with baby grass
remembers still the august Entry Hall
tributes of broken china
lean-to tables
and an old man shambling out and in
cursing the vultures
who would snatch the land...\"

~To Gran and No Farewell~ Velma Pollard" entryDate[268] = " " entryContent[268] = " " entryDate[269] = " 07/06/" + year entryContent[269] = " "After the tyranny
there are so few places to go
places to sing.

~Canto of the Tyrant who Hangs Himself~ Adrian Castro" entryDate[270] = " " entryContent[270] = " " entryDate[271] = " 07/07/" + year entryContent[271] = " "After the tyranny
there are so few places to go
places to sing.

~Canto of the Tyrant who Hangs Himself~ Adrian Castro" entryDate[272] = " " entryContent[272] = " " entryDate[273] = " 07/08/" + year entryContent[273] = "  \"And somewhere en el Barrio
two hands play a distant clave.\"

~Cantos to Blood & Honey~ Adrian Castro" entryDate[274] = " " entryContent[274] = " " entryDate[275] = " 07/09/" + year entryContent[275] = " \"tasting
And feeling her kisses on bright sunbathed days
I must always be remembering the sea

~Hymn to the Sea~ Frank Collymore" entryDate[276] = " " entryContent[276] = " " entryDate[277] = " 07/10/" + year entryContent[277] = " Happy Birthday, Nicolas Guillen

" entryDate[278] = " " entryContent[278] = " " entryDate[279] = " 07/11/" + year entryContent[279] = "  \"The sap of this story is not sacred nectar,
the feeling it gives holds my mind in its grip\".

~Working all day, dreaming at night~ Jit Narain" entryDate[280] = " " entryContent[280] = " " entryDate[281] = " 07/12/" + year entryContent[281] = " \"After the tyranny
there are so few places to go
places to sing.

~Canto of the Tyrant who Hangs Himself~ Adrian Castro" entryDate[282] = " 07/13/" + year entryContent[282] = " Happy Birthday, Earl Lovelace
" entryDate[283] = " " entryContent[283] = " " entryDate[284] = " 07/14/" + year entryContent[284] = " \"After the tyranny
there are so few places to go
places to sing.

~Canto of the Tyrant who Hangs Himself~ Adrian Castro" entryDate[285] = " " entryContent[285] = " " entryDate[286] = " 07/15/" + year entryContent[286] = " \"A truck
Heavy laden
With bananas
Rounding the curve
Of the white road
Leaving dust
And noise\"

~Cameo~ Una Marson" entryDate[287] = " " entryContent[287] = " " entryDate[288] = " 07/16/" + year entryContent[288] = " Happy Birthday, Reinaldo Arenas

" entryDate[289] = " " entryContent[289] = " " entryDate[290] = " 07/17/" + year entryContent[290] = " \"Patterning myself whole, dreams coming
Alive across the ocean, a ship canting,
Land lifting up, the fumes yet in my nostrils
My body's own heat -
I continue to rise like yeast.\"

~My Sundry Life~ Cyril Dabydeen" entryDate[291] = " " entryContent[291] = " " entryDate[292] = " 07/18/" + year entryContent[292] = " \"He flipped his hands. The knuckles are gnarled,
Bruised, swollen. Tendons welded to the wrist
Stand in a bed of tall veins, his curled
Fingers form a huge hammer for a fist.\"

~Bloodlines~ Fred D'Aguiar" entryDate[293] = " " entryContent[293] = " " entryDate[294] = " 07/19/" + year entryContent[294] = " \"Even as the murmuring
sea unwraps and wraps its arms
in turn around each dead, loved thing
and the gesture may be fruitless, but is made.\"

~The Witness~ Wayne Brown" entryDate[295] = " " entryContent[295] = " " entryDate[296] = " 07/20/" + year entryContent[296] = " \"There is no white world, there is no white ethic, any more than there is a white intelligence.There are in every part of the world men who search.I am not a prisoner of history. I should not seek there for the meaning of my destiny.I should constantly remind myself that the real leap consists in introduction invention into existence.In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself.\"

~Black Skin, White Masks~ Frantz Fanon

Happy Birthday, Frantz Fanon

" entryDate[297] = " " entryContent[297] = " " entryDate[298] = " 07/21/" + year entryContent[298] = " \"Cuba is a white horse galloping,
galloping from the shore to a distant palm grove.\"

~I Could Say~ Jesus Cos Causse" entryDate[299] = " " entryContent[299] = " " entryDate[300] = " 07/22/" + year entryContent[300] = " \"Do you feel my pain
This anguish like none other
From taming with the words of France
This heart that came to me from Senegal?\"

~Betrayal~ Leon Laleau" entryDate[301] = " " entryContent[301] = " " entryDate[302] = " 07/23/" + year entryContent[302] = " \"I knew when dark-haired evening put on
her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea,
sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh
that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting.\"

~The Schooner "Flight"~Derek Walcott
" entryDate[303] = " " entryContent[303] = " " entryDate[304] = " 07/24/" + year entryContent[304] = " Happy Birthday, Michael Ekwueme Thelwell
" entryDate[305] = " " entryContent[305] = " " entryDate[306] = " 07/25/" + year entryContent[306] = " Happy Birthday, Garfield Ellis
" entryDate[307] = " " entryContent[307] = " " entryDate[308] = " 07/26/" + year entryContent[308] = " Happy Birthday, Austin Clarke

" entryDate[309] = " " entryContent[309] = " " entryDate[310] = " 07/27/" + year entryContent[310] = " \"in this beautiful mosaic of madness
this melting pot of blackeyed peas
and lynchropes,
fried plantains and burning crosses,
blood-puddings and blood-baths....
I am familiar with the fetid smell of fear
it invades our bodies
seeps out of our pores
congeals the blood\"

~Snapshots, Headlines and Clippings~ Donna Weir-Soley" entryDate[311] = " " entryContent[311] = " " entryDate[312] = " 07/28/" + year entryContent[312] = " \"She teases with those flashes, yes, but once
you yield to human horniness, you see
through all that moonshine what they really were,
those gods as seed-bulls, gods as rutting swans
an overheated farmhand's literature.\"
 
~Europa~ Derek Walcott" entryDate[313] = " " entryContent[313] = " " entryDate[314] = " 07/29/" + year entryContent[314] = " \"my brother
what are you looking for throughout these forests
of horns and hooves of wings of horses
all punctuate things
all bipunctuate things

~Wilfredo Lam~ Aime Cesaire" entryDate[315] = " " entryContent[315] = " " entryDate[316] = " 07/30/" + year entryContent[316] = " \"Like a woman whose charm
Masks valour and passion
In your modesty, you want your tears
To adorn your rags with pearls.\"

~Would I Deny?~ Marie-Magdeleine Carbet" entryDate[317] = " " entryContent[317] = " " entryDate[318] = " 07/31/" + year entryContent[318] = " \"I come from coconut groves
where men's heads hang like ripe mangoes
no matter what the season.\"

~My Grandmother Danced~ Mirlande Jean-Giles" entryDate[319] = " " entryContent[319] = " " entryDate[320] = " 08/01/" + year entryContent[320] = "

\"At night she dreams that her mother
undresses her and discovers that, under
her outerwear, her bare limbs are marked

with the broad and urgent striations
of the huge and fierce cat of Asia
with the stunning golden quartz eyes.\"

~On Becoming a Tiger~ Lorna Goodison

Happy Birthday, Lorna!

Happy Emancipation Day!

" entryDate[321] = " " entryContent[321] = " " entryDate[322] = " 08/02/" + year entryContent[322] = " \"another young one gone
another mother sighs
cho! all this fuss
making them fit to earn
the living we don't know
that they will ever need
them dying off like
Kingston butterflies\"

~Lines in Sorrow~ Velma Pollard" entryDate[323] = " " entryContent[323] = " " entryDate[324] = " 08/03/" + year entryContent[324] = " \"I love those bars and taverns
by the sea
where people chat and drink
merely to drink and chat.\"

~Bars~ Nicolas Guillen" entryDate[325] = " " entryContent[325] = " " entryDate[326] = " 08/04/" + year entryContent[326] = "  \"the mute indifference of the stars, awake
like a shower of open, winking eyes.\"

~Forbidden Fruit~ Luis Pales Matos" entryDate[327] = " " entryContent[327] = " " entryDate[328] = " 08/05/" + year entryContent[328] = " Happy Birthday, Erroll Hill

" entryDate[329] = " " entryContent[329] = " " entryDate[330] = " 08/06/" + year entryContent[330] = "

\"In idle August, while the sea soft,
and leaves of brown islands stick to the rim
of this Carribean, I blow out the light
by the dreamless face of Maria Concepcion
to ship as a seaman on the schooner Flight.

~The Schooner "Flight"~ Derek Walcott

Happy Independence Day, Jamaica!

" entryDate[331] = " " entryContent[331] = " " entryDate[332] = " 08/07/" + year entryContent[332] = "

\"Jamaican oman cunny, sah!
Is how dem jinnal so?
Look how long dem liberated
An de man dem never know\"

~Jamaica Oman~ Louise Bennett-Coverly.


Happy Birthday, Miss Lou

" entryDate[333] = " " entryContent[333] = " " entryDate[334] = " 08/08/" + year entryContent[334] = " \"Then we would go off across the city
Carrying in our hearts, full of silent sobs,
The bitter burden of unspoken words
And the empty pride of having kept our pain.\"

~Encounter~ Marie Therese Colimon
" entryDate[335] = " " entryContent[335] = " " entryDate[336] = " 08/09/" + year entryContent[336] = " \"The island pushing towards morning
its weight of humanity.\"

~Islands~ Guy Tirolien
" entryDate[337] = " " entryContent[337] = " " entryDate[338] = " 08/10/" + year entryContent[338] = " \"A true poem is another land
where one sojourns
when one is past death's door.\"

~A true poem~ Trefossa
" entryDate[339] = " " entryContent[339] = " " entryDate[340] = " 08/11/" + year entryContent[340] = "

Happy Birthday, Roger Mais

" entryDate[341] = " " entryContent[341] = " " entryDate[342] = " 08/12/" + year entryContent[342] = " \"Dragon's teeth still rattle under root
And under stone the cold snake's coiled sleep
Rapt in its murderous sleep.\"

~The World of Islands~ Eric Roach" entryDate[343] = " " entryContent[343] = " " entryDate[344] = " 08/13/" + year entryContent[344] = " \"Sun is a badge of power pouring in
A darkening star that rains its glory down.\"

~There Runs a Dream~ A. J. Seymour
" entryDate[345] = " " entryContent[345] = " " entryDate[346] = " 08/14/" + year entryContent[346] = " \"When the multitudes run rioting
leaving behind ashes of burned injustices
...I will be in the midst with the torch in my hand.\"

~Julia de Burgos~ Julia de Burgos
" entryDate[347] = " " entryContent[347] = " " entryDate[348] = " 08/15/" + year entryContent[348] = " \"because we are all knots of a single stem
and our hungers and our dreams
sense each other through the same gestures and same
works.\"

~Meditation on the Shores of Evening~ Pedro Mir
" entryDate[349] = " " entryContent[349] = " " entryDate[350] = " 08/16/" + year entryContent[350] = " \"Let the sea repeat,
unwatched
its long, salt hymn.\"

~After-Image~ Dennis Scott" entryDate[351] = " " entryContent[351] = " " entryDate[352] = " 08/17/" + year entryContent[352] = " \"No one remember, old Marcus Garvey\"

Marcus Garvey~ Burning Spear

Happy Birthday, VS Naipaul
Happy Birthday,Marcus Garvey
" entryDate[353] = " " entryContent[353] = " " entryDate[354] = " 08/18/" + year entryContent[354] = " \"Tell them I am baptized
with fire
but not born again
tell them they can
curse and call me
in their civil tongue
a bitch
let them know what's cooking
in this cool and comely pot
hot as pitch
black as death
unseasoned
but unbeautifully
Blessed.\"

~Blessed~ Howard Fergus
" entryDate[355] = " " entryContent[355] = " " entryDate[356] = " 08/19/" + year entryContent[356] = " \"In those times, she says, in October
tenth month of the year
the O in the ten would become an opening
a funnel through which rain would pour.\"

~Notes from my Mother's Village Before the Village got Light~ Lorna Goodison" entryDate[357] = " " entryContent[357] = " " entryDate[358] = " 08/20/" + year entryContent[358] = " \"A burst of laughter fresh follows this counterpart and the two girls enter, each one, a bouquet with the hand. Bouba has slept for a few hours, the legs collected under its chest. In the position of the foetus. Valerie Miller went directly towards the Couch with a large bouquet of streaming lilac of rain. Miz Littérature put its flowers in a vase which it placed on a corner of the window. It looks at me typing one moment. Valerie Miller wears a yellow and green dress in the style of Sonia Delaunay.\"

~How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired~ Dany Laferrière" entryDate[359] = " " entryContent[359] = " " entryDate[360] = " 08/21/" + year entryContent[360] = " \"Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?\"

~A Far Cry From Africa~ Derek Walcott
" entryDate[361] = " " entryContent[361] = " " entryDate[362] = " 08/22/" + year entryContent[362] = " \"Is music, then, a balcony
from which a shuffling of passings
is surmised, or is it
mortar and archway, or must it be
inkling, maestro, a suspicion
of survivals?\"

~Isla de Corcho~  Ricardo Pau-Llosa " entryDate[363] = " " entryContent[363] = " " entryDate[364] = " 08/23/" + year entryContent[364] = " Happy Birthday,Malachi" entryDate[365] = " " entryContent[365] = " " entryDate[366] = " 08/24/" + year entryContent[366] = " \"She found pleasure in memories, as an old woman might have done. Her mind was a confusion of memory and imagination. It was always places that she thought of, not people. She would lie thinking of the dark shadows of houses in a street white with sunshine; or trees with slender black branches and young green leaves, like the trees of a London square in spring; or of a dark-purple sea, the sea of a chromo or of some tropical country that she had never seen.\"

~After Leaving Mr Mackenzie~ Jean Rhys

Happy Birthday, Jean Rhys

Happy Birthday,Linton Kwesi Johnson" entryDate[367] = " " entryContent[367] = " " entryDate[368] = " 08/25/" + year entryContent[368] = "

"Me one, way out in the crowd,
I blow the sounds, the pain,
but not a soul
would come inside my world
or tell me how it true."

~Valley Prince (For Don D.)~ Mervyn Morris

" entryDate[369] = " 08/26/" + year entryContent[369] = " \"Old Eddie's face, wrinkled with river lights,
Looked like a Mississippi man's. The eyes,
Derisive and avuncular at once,
Swivelling, fixed me. They'd seen
Too many wakes, too many cathouse nights.
The bony, idle fingers on the valves
Of his knee-cradled horn could tear
Through 'Georgia on My Mind' or 'Jesus Saves'
With the same fury of indifference,
If what propelled such frenzy was despair.\"

~The Glory Trumpeter~ Derek Walcott" entryDate[370] = " " entryContent[370] = " " entryDate[371] = " 08/27/" + year entryContent[371] = "

like the beginnings - o odales o adagios - of islands
from under the clouds where I write the first poem

Kamau Brathwaite

" entryDate[372] = " " entryContent[372] = " " entryDate[373] = " 08/28/" + year entryContent[373] = " \"After the tyranny
there are so few places to go
places to sing.\"

~Canto of the Tyrant who Hangs Himself~ Adrian Castro
" entryDate[374] = " " entryContent[374] = " " entryDate[375] = " 08/29/" + year entryContent[375] = " \"An indifferent Kingston
flushed itself into the harbor
silting up the ocean
with departures. The road
curled around the airport
like a question mark,
its meager wrist of land
as fragile as your embracing hands.\"

~Jamaica Farewell~ Ralph C. Thompson" entryDate[376] = " " entryContent[376] = " " entryDate[377] = " 08/30/" + year entryContent[377] = " \"Dashing up the beach masked
in fatigues, he scattered turtles
scouting for birth grounds;
soldier crabs adjusted their helmets
against his \"pow pows\"; in the mangroves
gutu crabs surrendered
their claws to his bamboo bayonet
thrusts; his \"boom boom\" and swift
flops in the fields woke up
touch-me-nots.\"

~Christmas in October~ Marvin E. Williams" entryDate[378] = " " entryContent[378] = " " entryDate[379] = " 08/31/" + year entryContent[379] = " \"the bats stipple the soft evening with little cries.\"

~The City~ Saint-John Perse" entryDate[380] = " " entryContent[380] = " " entryDate[381] = " 09/01/" + year entryContent[381] = " \"put salt on soucouyants' skins
make douens disappear
and you'll dance in life's moonlight
safe from all harm.\"

~Tabiz~ Anson Gonzalez" entryDate[382] = " 09/02/" + year entryContent[382] = " \"first strain sunlight through avocado leaves
then pour into a dim country kitchen through bare
windows on a wooden table freshly scrubbed.\"

~Child this is the gospel on bakesl~ Claire Harris" entryDate[383] = " 09/03/" + year entryContent[383] = " \"I am a woman
of a fierce green place

my brows are mountains.\"

~Island Woman~ Pamela Mordecai" entryDate[384] = " 09/04/" + year entryContent[384] = " \"we below deck heard only the muffled
thud of scuffling feet, could only
guess the quick, fierce tussle

~Sometimes in the Middle of the Story~ Edward Baugh" entryDate[385] = " 09/05/" + year entryContent[385] = " \"duppies of dust and ululations in light
vortexed around her.\"

~The Madwoman of Papine~ Slade Hopkinson" entryDate[386] = " 09/06/" + year entryContent[386] = " \"For burnished beauty nearer home.
Turn in the sun, my love, my love!\"

~Revelation~ H. A. Vaughn" entryDate[387] = " 09/07/" + year entryContent[387] = " \"Meck me get it straight Mass Charlie
For me noh quite undastand
Yuh gwine kill all English dialect
Or jus Jamaica one?\"

~Bans O' Killin~ Louise Bennett-Coverley

Happy Birthday, Miss Lou

" entryDate[388] = " 09/08/" + year entryContent[388] = " \"Sun glinted on its bright encircling brass, a small
version of the seawall bandstand elevated, held
up by a concrete red-and-white striped column, like a tall
bandsman in uniform topped by his tuba's shing bell.\"

~The Lighthouse~ Michael Gilkes" entryDate[389] = " 09/09/" + year entryContent[389] = " \"if loving these islands must be my load
out of corruption my soul takes wings.\"

~The Schooner "Flight"~ Derek Walcott
" entryDate[390] = " 09/10/" + year entryContent[390] = " \"How lucky the normal, those peculiar creatures
Those who didn't have a mad mother, a drunk father, a delinquent son.\"

~How Lucky, the Normal~ Roberto Fernandez Retamar" entryDate[391] = " 09/11/" + year entryContent[391] = " \"You may not know this yet
my son
I sense that you sense it.
Yet what we leave,
we carry.\"

~Not From Here~ John La Rose" entryDate[392] = " 09/12/" + year entryContent[392] = " \"I was wondering if I could make myself
nothing but fire, pure and incorruptible.\"

~Poems of Shape and Motion~ Martin Carter" entryDate[393] = " 09/13/" + year entryContent[393] = " \"Mr Potter did not have a uterus that shuddered in agony, for he was a man, and he did not have a menstrual cycle, for he was a man.... I never knew him at all, had never touched him, or known how he smelled after a night of sleep or after a full day's work.\"

~Mr Potter~ Jamaica Kincaid" entryDate[394] = " 09/14/" + year entryContent[394] = " \"One little bwoy come blow im horn
an me look pon im wid scorn
an me realise how me five bwoy-picni
was a victim of de trick
dem call partisan politricks\"

~Mi Cyaan Believe It~ Mikey Smith

Happy Birthday, Mikey Smith

" entryDate[395] = " 09/15/" + year entryContent[395] = "  \"Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day\"

~The Harlem Dancer~ Claude McKay

Happy Birthday,  Claude Mckay
" entryDate[396] = " 09/16/" + year entryContent[396] = "  \"puddles of pigment
Bloom in the palette's wild small garden.\"

~Landscape Painter, Jamaica~ Vivian Virtue " entryDate[397] = " 09/17/" + year entryContent[397] = " \"In our land
Poppies do not spring
From atoms of young blood.\"

~In Our Land~ Howard M. Telemaque" entryDate[398] = " 09/18/" + year entryContent[398] = " \"What we do with time
and what time does with us
is the way of history
spun around our feet.\"

~History and Away~ Andrew Salkey" entryDate[399] = " 09/19/" + year entryContent[399] = " \"Even as the murmuring
sea unwraps and wraps its arms
in turn around each dead, loved thing
and the gesture may be fruitless, but is made.\"

~The Witness~ Wayne Brown" entryDate[400] = " 09/20/" + year entryContent[400] = " \"the world was round and we the spices in it
time wheeled around our memories like stars.\"

~The visibilty trigger~ Kamau Brathwaite" entryDate[401] = " 09/21/" + year entryContent[401] = " \"I have chosen to unify a body of work that branches out into every genre (poetry, theater, novels, essays) around the symbolic image of a tree, the mangrove: that tentacular and pioneering plant which inaugu­rates dry land and reclaims It from the salt of the sea in Martinique as in Florida (in the space of the plantation) by sending out roots from its trunk into the sand. It is a moving sight, this plant throwing its shoots offshore, into the shallows, with an illusory fragility and precariousness: soon, an island, an archipelago will rise up where before there was only the surface of the sea under the crushing tropical humidity. It defies hurricanes with a patience that is liminary. \"

~Writing as Mangrove~ Edouard Glissant

Happy Birthday, Edouard Glissant
" entryDate[402] = " 09/22/" + year entryContent[402] = " \"And, look, see how cedar trees
Do shade a garden in that place.\"

~Trees His Testament~ Philip Sherlock" entryDate[403] = " 09/23/" + year entryContent[403] = " \"my brother
what are you looking for throughout these forests
of horns and hooves of wings of horses
all punctuate things
all bipunctuate things.\"

~Wilfredo Lam~ Aime Cesaire" entryDate[404] = " 09/24/" + year entryContent[404] = "  \"the bats stipple the soft evening with little cries.\"

~The City~ Saint-John Perse " entryDate[405] = " 09/25/" + year entryContent[405] = "  \"Knowing that at the end
Death will acknowledge no identities
i can only half believe
in heroes, villains, histories.\"

~Night Vision~ Kendel Hippolyte" entryDate[406] = " 09/26/" + year entryContent[406] = " \"I know
like Grandmama the virtues
of a long stout knife
And I am loose, uncertified.\"

~Certifiable~ Pamela Mordecai" entryDate[407] = " 09/27/" + year entryContent[407] = " Happy Birthday, Jan Carew

" entryDate[408] = " 09/28/" + year entryContent[408] = "  \"The stone had skidded arc'd and bloomed into islands:
Cuba and San Domingo
Jamaica and Puerto Rico
Grenada Guadeloupe Bonaire

curved stone hissed into reef
wave teeth fanged into clay
white splash flashed into spray
Bathsheba Montego Bay

bloom of the arcing summers...\"

~Calypso~ Kamau Brathwaite" entryDate[409] = " 09/29/" + year entryContent[409] = " \"the hat-brim across the oval
of her face. It balances everything
the twin astonishments
of love and loss that light her face.\"

~Tales From the Rain Forest~ Edward Baugh
" entryDate[410] = " 09/30/" + year entryContent[410] = " \"That bright day, the light
like clusters of gold fruit, alone, unknown
of any, the dugout and I fled the shore's burning beauty.\"

~Arawak Prologue~ Basil McFarlane " entryDate[411] = " 10/01/" + year entryContent[411] = "  \"I can see the drifting offshore lights,
black posts where the pelicans brood..\"

~Working Late~ Louis Simpson" entryDate[412] = " 10/02/" + year entryContent[412] = " \"Happiness is
sitting in one's own chair, in one's own living room
and shelling green gungo from one's own backyard tree\"

~Shelling Gungo Peas~ Gloria Escoffery " entryDate[413] = " 10/03/" + year entryContent[413] = " \"There were flowers dancing
on the carpet
as the trade winds
whispered through my house
caressing our sapodilla skins.\"

~The Visit~ Nydia Ecury" entryDate[414] = " 10/04/" + year entryContent[414] = " \"You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart. \"

~Love After Love~ Derek Walcott" entryDate[415] = " 10/05/" + year entryContent[415] = " \"Patterning myself whole, dreams coming
Alive across the ocean, a ship canting,
Land lifting up, the fumes yet in my nostrils
My body's own heat -
I continue to rise like yeast.\"

~My Sundry Life~ Cyril Dabydeen" entryDate[416] = " 10/06/" + year entryContent[416] = " \"Those are wrinkling worms on wavetops
Celebrating sword-glints on water bubbies
Here a moment
Singing the next
Down ages of appreciation.\"

~Demerary Telepathy~ Sasenarine Persaud " entryDate[417] = " 10/07/" + year entryContent[417] = " \"When my thoughts are a tangle I cannot untie
When meanings are lost and I cannot say why
When the day to day drudging is exhausting not fulfilling
When a hollow space inside says I'm existing not living
Those days, mother
When life is a circle that keeps me spinning \"

~Somedays Mother~ Merle Collins " entryDate[418] = " 10/08/" + year entryContent[418] = " \"So mi jook one in him eye and him started fi cry
me thump him pon him mout and him started fi shout
me kick him pon him shin so him started fi spin
me hit him pon him chin an him drop pon a bin
- an crash, an dead\"

~Sonny's Lettah~ Linton Kwesi Johnson " entryDate[419] = " 10/09/" + year entryContent[419] = " \"Growing up in Miami I never heard his name,
my aunts hissing comunista, his image cut
from photos, letters torn. “Fool, let him eat swill
in paradise,” Uncle Manny would say as he
bit ripe tomatoes like apples, dimple dripping.\"

~Elegy for Great-Uncle Julio, Cane Cutter (Marti Sugar Mill, Matanzas, Cuba)~ Orlando Menes " entryDate[420] = " 10/10/" + year entryContent[420] = "  \"inhale the luscious guava scent
in the kitchen with the guava cheese bubbling
and me like a lady in waiting\"

~Florida and Other Places~ Jean Goulbourne " entryDate[421] = " 10/11/" + year entryContent[421] = " \"When the stone fall that morning out of the johncrow sky
it was not dark at first . that opening on to the red sea humming
but something in my mouth like feathers .  blue like bubbles
carrying signals & planets & the sliding curve of the
world like a water pic. ture in a raindrop when the pressure. drop\"

~Stone~ Kamau Brathwaite " entryDate[422] = " 10/12/" + year entryContent[422] = " \"when papa was killed
in a corner in the
streets of Haiti
he was just getting
juice for me to have
with dinner.\"

~Sawfish Soup~ Edwidge Danticat" entryDate[423] = " 10/13/" + year entryContent[423] = " \"Then we would go off across the city
Carrying in our hearts, full of silent sobs,
The bitter burden of unspoken words
And the empty pride of having kept our pain.\"

~Encounter~ Marie Therese Colimon
" entryDate[424] = " 10/14/" + year entryContent[424] = " \"The island pushing towards morning
its weight of humanity.\"

~Islands~ Guy Tirolien " entryDate[425] = " 10/15/" + year entryContent[425] = "  \"Dragon's teeth still rattle under root
And under stone the cold snake's coiled sleep
Rapt in its murderous sleep.\"

~The World of Islands~ Eric Roach" entryDate[426] = " 10/16/" + year entryContent[426] = " \"i’m a hands woman
love me some hands
love to take his large fingers between my palms
and suck on the tip of each one
just before i walk away\"

~Caribbean Passion~ Opal Palmer Adisa" entryDate[427] = " 10/17/" + year entryContent[427] = " \"The road unwinds like a ball of twine.
A crude zigzag pulled by teeth
from flour bag seams.\"

~Roseau--The Forgotten Village~ McDonald Dixon" entryDate[428] = " 10/18/" + year entryContent[428] = " \"Cuba is a white horse galloping,
galloping from the shore to a distant palm grove

~I Could Say~ Jesus Cos Causse" entryDate[429] = " 10/19/" + year entryContent[429] = " Happy Birthday, OR Dathorne

" entryDate[430] = " 10/20/" + year entryContent[430] = " \"It must be in all nature
To desire a death-in-life existence--
As we, shrouded on the foliage of passion,
Seek evanescent joy that
Must only end in death.\"

~Parasite~ Hazel Simmons-McDonald" entryDate[431] = " 10/21/" + year entryContent[431] = " Happy Birthday, Zee Edgell
" entryDate[432] = " 10/22/" + year entryContent[432] = " \"And somewhere en el Barrio
two hands play a distant clave.\"

~Cantos to Blood & Honey~ Adrian Castro
" entryDate[433] = " 10/23/" + year entryContent[433] = "  \"Sun is a shapely fire turning in air
Fed by white springs
and earth’s a powerless sun.

~Sun is a Shapely Fire~ AJ Seymour" entryDate[434] = " 10/24/" + year entryContent[434] = " Happy Birthday, Michelle Cliff
" entryDate[435] = " 10/25/" + year entryContent[435] = " \"And somewhere en el Barrio
two hands play a distant clave.\"

~Cantos to Blood & Honey~ Adrian Castro
 " entryDate[436] = " 10/26/" + year entryContent[436] = "  \"I love those bars and taverns
by the sea
where people chat and drink
merely to drink and chat\"

~Bars~ Nicolas Guillen " entryDate[437] = " 10/27/" + year entryContent[437] = " \"Dudu darling, go sleep now, be good:
Your eyes shut? You dreaming?
That's right, sugarcake my skin, my own blood.
Just a little kiss, till morning.\"

~Lullaby~ Albert Hellman" entryDate[438] = " 10/28/" + year entryContent[438] = " \"When the air is a sharpened blade,
cutting nostrils clean like cutlass steel,
the bush planters pass the sleeping houses
(sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs).
They lumber up the mountain road;
their tall tops pounding the asphalt smooth.\"

~The Felling of a Tree~ Jennifer Rahim" entryDate[439] = " 10/29/" + year entryContent[439] = " \"asking permission
to banish the myth
that I best bear sorrow
in the tallow of my body
bountiful in recovery
to be free from fixations
that commend me and degrade me
disrepect me in respect
mock me with praise, canonize
iconize, idealize, immortalize
treating me worse than the enemy
mark me as martyr
impale me in literature
climbing down my rockstone

for mine is
the power
the glory
to live\"

~Woman Desendant~ Cynthia James" entryDate[440] = " 10/30/" + year entryContent[440] = " \"The land belongs to no one
if not to us.
We ride deep into the mahoganies
and out to a valley splashed with royal palms,
through a tangle of coffee trees,
across the river and
up the stones to the mountain peak.\"

~El Cimarron or the Runaway Slave~ Carolina Hospital" entryDate[441] = " 10/31/" + year entryContent[441] = " \"And somewhere en el Barrio
two hands play a distant clave.\"

~Cantos to Blood & Honey~ Adrian Castro
" entryDate[442] = " 11/01/" + year entryContent[442] = " \"Flabelli planted the spears of their high fans of pens in the shipyard, and began the slow trip of Their Sanctity through the innumerable stays that still separated it of their deprived apartments.\"

~Fragment of the ARPA and the Shade~ Alejo Carpentier
" entryDate[443] = " 11/02/" + year entryContent[443] = "

\"puddles of pigment
Bloom in the palette's wild small garden"


~Landscape Painter, Jamaica~ Vivian Virtue

Happy Birthday, Michelle Cliff!

" entryDate[444] = " 11/03/" + year entryContent[444] = " \" I have two mother countries: Cuba and the night.\"

~Dos Patrias~ Jose Marti
" entryDate[445] = " 11/04/" + year entryContent[445] = " \"So you have seen them
with their cardboard grips,
felt hats, rain-cloaks, the women
with their plain
or purple-tinted
coats hiding their fatten-
ed hips\"

~Emigrants~ Kamau Brathwaite" entryDate[446] = " 11/05/" + year entryContent[446] = "

\"puddles of pigment
Bloom in the palette's wild small garden"


~Landscape Painter, Jamaica~ Vivian Virtue

" entryDate[447] = " 11/06/" + year entryContent[447] = " \"But best is this night surf
with slow scriptures of sand,
that sends, not quite a seraph,
but a late cormorant,

whose fading cry propels
through phosphorescent shoal
what, in my childhood gospels,
used to be called the Soul.\"

~Pentecost~ Derek Walcott " entryDate[448] = " 11/07/" + year entryContent[448] = " \"They hanged him on a clement morning, swung
between the falling sunlight and the women's
breathing, like a black apostrophe to pain.
All morning while the children hushed
their hopscotch joy and the cane kept growing
he hung there sweet and low.\"

~Epitaph~ Dennis Scott" entryDate[449] = " 11/08/" + year entryContent[449] = " \"Is music, then, a balcony
from which a shuffling of passings
is surmised, or is it
mortar and archway, or must it be
inkling, maestro, a suspicion
of survivals?\"

~Isla de Corcho~ Ricardo Pau-Llosa" entryDate[450] = " 11/09/" + year entryContent[450] = " \"They were educated men,
how could they not know what was coming?
How could they not save Ubre Blanca
from the endless speeches, the cameras, and the fist?\"

~Ganaderia~ Ricardo Pau-Llosa
" entryDate[451] = " 11/10/" + year entryContent[451] = " Happy Birthday, Adrian Castro
" entryDate[452] = " 11/11/" + year entryContent[452] = " \"I was wondering if I could make myself
nothing but fire, pure and incorruptible.\"

~Poems of Shape and Motion~ Martin Carter
" entryDate[453] = " 11/12/" + year entryContent[453] = " \"That bright day, the light
like clusters of gold fruit, alone, unknown
of any, the dugout and I fled the shore's burning beauty.\"

~Arawak Prologue~ Basil McFarlane." entryDate[454] = " 11/13/" + year entryContent[454] = " \"I can see the drifting offshore lights,
black posts where the pelicans brood..\"

~Working Late~ Louis Simpson" entryDate[455] = " 11/14/" + year entryContent[455] = " \"I praise the legends we made
When the drunk hawks and worse were merry
Waltzed up the day
Haloed the mountains of birds and the nestling curve of the reeling river

~Acceptance~ Neville Dawes" entryDate[456] = " 11/15/" + year entryContent[456] = " \"Then
when the sun lit up the leaves and
the road was a shining, twisting ribbon,
making up time for the bell.\"

~Cameo~ Cecil Gray" entryDate[457] = " 11/16/" + year entryContent[457] = " \"But no-one will say
If the agave still blooms on Long Mountain
Or if the market woman hills, swinging blue hips down the plain
Still sweat their springs
And smell of ginger lilies.\"

~When They Come from the Island~ Barbara Ferland" entryDate[458] = " 11/17/" + year entryContent[458] = " \"You still don't understand
how a victim is as guilty as accomplice.\"

~Letter to My Father from London~ James Berry" entryDate[459] = " 11/18/" + year entryContent[459] = " \"You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart. \"

~Love After Love~ Derek Walcott" entryDate[460] = " 11/19/" + year entryContent[460] = " \"Those are wrinkling worms on wavetops
Celebrating sword-glints on water bubbies
Here a moment
Singing the next
Down ages of appreciation.\"

~Demerary Telepathy~ Sasenarine Persaud" entryDate[461] = " 11/20/" + year entryContent[461] = " \"i’m a hands woman
love me some hands
love to take his large fingers between my palms
and suck on the tip of each one
just before i walk away\"

~Caribbean Passion~ Opal Palmer Adisa" entryDate[462] = " 11/21/" + year entryContent[462] = " \"Let me do this living while I can,
let me make some meaning while I can,
let me get far from Nothing while I can,
let me know this movement while I can
let me move these fingers, while I still can.\"

~Doing the Rhumba~ Kevyn Alan Arthur" entryDate[463] = " 11/22/" + year entryContent[463] = " \"When my thoughts are a tangle I cannot untie
When meanings are lost and I cannot say why
When the day to day drudging is exhausting not fulfilling
When a hollow space inside says I'm existing not living
Those days, mother
When life is a circle that keeps me spinning \"

~Somedays Mother~ Merle Collins" entryDate[464] = " 11/23/" + year entryContent[464] = " \"gods and spirits are summoned through the portal divine
i must share these with you\"

Ian Gregory Strachan" entryDate[465] = " 11/24/" + year entryContent[465] = " \"The land belongs to no one
if not to us.
We ride deep into the mahoganies
and out to a valley splashed with royal palms,
through a tangle of coffee trees,
across the river and
up the stones to the mountain peak.\"

~El Cimarron or the Runaway Slave~ Carolina Hospital" entryDate[466] = " 11/25/" + year entryContent[466] = " Poets find roses in your subtleties,
wine in your complexities,
wind in your abstractions.

In you, I find
a tight lid I can't pry open;
a wet match on a dark night;
a hollow kiss.

~Language~ Carolina Hospital" entryDate[467] = " 11/26/" + year entryContent[467] = " \"The current on shingle
was pure whispers I spelled
out, which spelt his name.
Step forward Columbus.\"

~1492~ Fred D'Aguiar" entryDate[468] = " 11/27/" + year entryContent[468] = " \"inhale the luscious guava scent
in the kitchen with the guava cheese bubbling
and me like a lady in waiting\"

~Florida and Other Places~ Jean Goulbourne" entryDate[469] = " 11/28/" + year entryContent[469] = " \"Whether by shards of light, armied demarcations,
or the mounting poise of approaching city,
we are the beasts who do more than leave
our bones on the fiery earth.
And we alone can lower the blind upon it
as the clouds come gather again to shut
our sights and cool the urgent ground.\"

~Flight to L.A.~ Ricardo Pau-Llosa
" entryDate[470] = " 11/29/" + year entryContent[470] = " \"when papa was killed
in a corner in the
streets of Haiti
he was just getting
juice for me to have
with dinner.\"

~Sawfish Soup~ Edwidge Danticat" entryDate[471] = " 11/30/" + year entryContent[471] = " \"What we do with time
and what time does with us
is the way of history
spun around our feet.\"

~History and Away~ Andrew Salkey" entryDate[472] = " 12/01/" + year entryContent[472] = " \"From your second floor apartment
with its cathedral ceilings,
an herb garden
and dusty first editions,
I step out into
a Christmas card
with its snow covered walkway
leading to a yellow shingled house and
a red mailbox, empty.\"

~First Snows~ Carolina Hospital" entryDate[473] = " 12/02/" + year entryContent[473] = " \"One room remains
and one small fretwork shard
among the rotted beams
ingrown with baby grass
remembers still the august Entry Hall
tributes of broken china
lean-to tables
and an old man shambling out and in
cursing the vultures
who would snatch the land...\"

~To Gran and No Farewell~ Velma Pollard" entryDate[474] = " 12/03/" + year entryContent[474] = " \"Tek a trip from Kingston
to Jamaica
Tek twelve from a dozen
an me mumma in heaven
Mad house! Mad house!
me seh me cyaan believe it
me seh me cyaan believe it\"

~Mi Cyaan Believe It~ Mikey Smith" entryDate[475] = " 12/04/" + year entryContent[475] = " \"I have chosen to unify a body of work that branches out into every genre (poetry, theater, novels, essays) around the symbolic image of a tree, the mangrove: that tentacular and pioneering plant which inaugu­rates dry land and reclaims It from the salt of the sea in Martinique as in Florida (in the space of the plantation) by sending out roots from its trunk into the sand. It is a moving sight, this plant throwing its shoots offshore, into the shallows, with an illusory fragility and precariousness: soon, an island, an archipelago will rise up where before there was only the surface of the sea under the crushing tropical humidity. It defies hurricanes with a patience that is liminary. \"

~Writing as Mangrove~ Edouard Glissant" entryDate[476] = " 12/05/" + year entryContent[476] = " \" i am
cane
cotton
tobacco
the silenced workers
my ancestors birthed.\"

~Cottan cane Tobacco~ Opal Palmer Adisa" entryDate[477] = " 12/06/" + year entryContent[477] = " \"I shall light
First debts to pay and fences to men,
lay to rest the wounded past, foes disguised as friends.\"

~I Shall Light a Candle of Understanding~ Lorna Goodison" entryDate[478] = " 12/07/" + year entryContent[478] = " \" Today doves flew from my head
and my hair grew
the longing is gone from my body
and I'm filled with peace, perfect peace.\"

~At the Centre~ Afua Cooper" entryDate[479] = " 12/08/" + year entryContent[479] = " \"another young one gone
another mother sighs
cho! all this fuss
making them fit to earn
the living we don't know
that they will ever need
them dying off like
Kingston butterflies\"

~Lines in Sorrow~ Velma Pollard" entryDate[480] = " 12/09/" + year entryContent[480] = "

Out in the yard turning gray in the dawn,
I stood like a stone and nothing else move
but the cold sea rippling like galvanize
and the nail holes of stars in the sky roof,
till a wind start to interfere with the trees.
I pass me dry neighbor sweeping she yard
as I went downhill, and I nearly said:
\"Sweep soft, you witch, 'cause she don't sleep hard,\"
but the bitch look through me like I was dead.\"

~The Schooner "Flight"~ Derek Walcott

Happy Birthday, David Dabydeen

" entryDate[481] = " 12/10/" + year entryContent[481] = " \"Then we would go off across the city
Carrying in our hearts, full of silent sobs,
The bitter burden of unspoken words
And the empty pride of having kept our pain.\"

~Encounter~ Marie Therese Colimon" entryDate[482] = " 12/11/" + year entryContent[482] = " \"A true poem is another land
where one sojourns
when one is past death's door.\"

~A true poem~ Trefossa" entryDate[483] = " 12/12/" + year entryContent[483] = "

"When my thoughts are a tangle I cannot untie
When meanings are lost and I cannot say why
When the day to day drudging is exhausting not fulfilling
When a hollow space inside says I'm existing not living
Those days, mother
When life is a circle that keeps me spinning."

~Somedays Mother~ Merle Collins

" entryDate[484] = " 12/13/" + year entryContent[484] = " "When last I looked it had
no leaves, was stiff and white
with frost.

Now green leaves and brown berries toss,
toss and bob in the whipping wind\"

~This Tree My Timekeeper~ John Figueroa" entryDate[485] = " 12/14/" + year entryContent[485] = "

\"I am a woman
of a fierce green place

my brows are mountains,\"

~Island Woman~ Pamela Mordecai

" entryDate[486] = " 12/15/" + year entryContent[486] = " \"Sun is a badge of power pouring in
A darkening star that rains its glory down

~There Runs a Dream~ A. J. Seymour" entryDate[487] = " 12/16/" + year entryContent[487] = "

\"Let the sea repeat
unwatched, its long, salt hymn.\"

~After Image~ Dennis Scott


Happy Birthday, Dennis!


Haapy Birthday, Edgar Mittelholzer

" entryDate[488] = " 12/17/" + year entryContent[488] = " \"Love is Earth's mission
despite the massed dead.

~Chinese Lanterns from the Blue Child~ Tony McNeill.

Happy Birthday, Tony McNeill!
" entryDate[489] = " 12/18/" + year entryContent[489] = " \"The name of the city
says what it is
smoke on cold days, how it reels
under bright sunlight."

~The Name~ Mervyn Taylor.

Happy Birthday, Mervyn Taylor
" entryDate[490] = " 12/19/" + year entryContent[490] = " \"Lawd God
I tired fe hear it
I tired fe hear it
so till.
All dem big talk:
'Women are our natural resources
Women are the backbone
of this country'\"

~Elsa's Version~ Christine Craig" entryDate[491] = " 12/20/" + year entryContent[491] = "

\"Chocolate-dark limbs peeking out of her plush white dressing gown, the Venus-built lady waded indolently through rioting ivy, swollen red roses, nasturtiums that pursed into succulent lips. Blaise had often thought to ask the beautiful woman what her name was. But to meet the eyes of someone so self-possessed, much less speak to her...\"

~Slow Cold Chick~ Nalo Hopkinson


Happy Birthday, Nalo!


Happy Birthday, Errol John

" entryDate[492] = " 12/21/" + year entryContent[492] = " \"As the week went on we started to take a minute from shoveling
or unloading something on the hillside to stand and watch
the river, a half-mile below through a husk of cloud and rain.
Tuesday the water came up through the far fenceline. Wednesday

it crept over the pastures. Thursday it sifted through the holly grove,
soaked the lake. The rain didn't stop.
I woke in the middle of the night to hear it
running down the window by my bed. \"

~Lord, Plant my Feet on Higher ground~ Lorna Goodison" entryDate[493] = " 12/22/" + year entryContent[493] = " \"In a tinderbox frame, the light leaks
through gaps in the rotting panels
and salt air from the sea and brackish river
softens the collected folders until they green and bleed
into the wood.\"

~Requiem~ Kwame Dawes" entryDate[494] = " 12/23/" + year entryContent[494] = " \"Where a wind in the sail is hope,
That long desire, and the long weariness fulfills--
Come again to the hills\"

~All Men Come to the Hills~ Roger Mais" entryDate[495] = " 12/24/" + year entryContent[495] = " \"But when Chrismus Eve come an firerocket
start bus
everybody forget dem little fuss
is just love a neighbor eena dis ya lan
music ring pon banjo an old tin pan.' \"

~When Chrismus Come~ Jean Goulbourne" entryDate[496] = " 12/25/" + year entryContent[496] = "

\"I miss celebrations, but I miss most
the people of faith
who greeted warmly every year
the Christmas breeze

~Christmas Breeze~ John Figueroa


Merry Christmas!

" entryDate[497] = " 12/26/" + year entryContent[497] = "

"...the Negro found in the Spanish churches a Voodoo warmth he had never encountered in the Sulpician churches of the Cap. The baroque golds, the human hair of the Christs, the mystery of the richly carved confessionals, the guardian dog of the Dominicans, the dragons crushed under saintly feet, the pig of St. Anthony, the dubious color of St. Benedict, the black Virgins, the St. Georges with the buskins and corselets of actors in French tragedies, the shepherds' instruments played on Christmas Eve had an attraction, a power of seduction in presence, symbols, attributes, and signs similar to those of the altars of the houmforts consecrated to Damballah, the Snake god."

~Alejo Carpentier~

Happy Birthday, Alejo Carpentier

Happy Birthday, Muta!

" entryDate[498] = " 12/27/" + year entryContent[498] = " \"Ring center I come to you straight
shaping a vision beyond sugar in a plum
winding my waste tight in your face
clinging to a fence without shame
mounting it from rock and gravel
unhedged hips I raise
arching my back all over your wall.\"

~Bougainvillea Ringplay~ Marion Bethel" entryDate[499] = " 12/28/" + year entryContent[499] = " \"Glinting more of my life
with thunder-belch
and forest-spell
I listen with continuing awe
pressing an ear to the ground
my heart beating further rain.\"

~My Sundry Life~ Cyril Dabydeen" entryDate[500] = " 12/29/" + year entryContent[500] = " \"Beneath a canopy of gree crowns of mora trees
Shadows gather except where float tall pillars
Of thick golden light that sets the green dark shining.\"

~Forest Path, Nightfall~ Ian McDonald
" entryDate[501] = " 12/30/" + year entryContent[501] = " \"first strain sunlight through avocado leaves
then pour into a dim country kitchen through bare
windows on a wooden table freshly scrubbed.\"

~Child this is the gospel on bakesl~ Claire Harris
" entryDate[502] = " 12/31/" + year entryContent[502] = " \"Midnight at the close of this year,
my mother's spirit urges me
to entrust my sorrows to the sea.

~To Become Green Again and Young~ Lorna Goodison
" if (typeof display == "undefined") { var display = "date" } if (display == "random") { var randomNumber = Math.random() randomNumber *= varLength randomNumber = parseInt(randomNumber) if(isNaN(randomNumber)) randomNumber = 0 else randomNumber %= varLength selectedContent = entryContent[randomNumber] } else { for (x=0; x<(entryContent.length); x++) { tempDate = new Date(entryDate[x]) tempContent = entryContent[x] if ((tempDate <= today) && (tempDate > selectedDate)) { selectedContent = tempContent selectDate = tempDate } } } document.write (selectedContent)