NO-PEOPLE LAND

by Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming

Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming was born in Trinidad and lives in Nassau, Bahamas. An artist, poet, fiction writer as well as mechanical/building services engineer and part-time lecturer, she has published poetry in several magazines and anthologies in the Bahamas, the Caribbean and London. She won the David Hough Literary Prize from The Caribbean Writer (2001) and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association 2001 Short Story Competition. Her first book of poetry, Curry Flavour (2000) was published by Peepal Tree Press.

It is just useless so stop de ole talk
Start a new talk, a harderday morning
Forget de serpent, find yourself a wuk
Dream the Great Mother in a cave mourning

While Our Father in heaven reigning
Children ah de earth have hungry bellies
Full up big with gas and malnu paining
De angels fly away from dem smellies

Dey ent touching no blood, snat and tear stains
To dirty up dey white robes and wing tips
Let de Mother and she helpers make gains
Rise up in dem shanty towns tattered slips

Of no-people land behind-God-back place
Not a mountain or seashore Asgard
Not a Paradise so full ah grace
Just a bubbly, muddy Devil’s Woodyard

Full with rotten-egg fumes ah pig-pen stink
Buh look good, good, see how amoebae thrive
See zygote cells multiply in a blink
Hatching de guppy roe dat survive

Little mermaid goddesses transparent
For dem who can read de message within
Who can start a new talk to make things right
Bellies full with food and faces grinnin