Nearby Bushes / A House With No Walls
by Akhim Alexis
Nearby Bushes
In nearby bushes, where a cloud of smoke lingers, there’s a bird that lives on the remains of people in pain. There comes a time of year when Mam gets very sad, she calls it melancholy, I remember the word every time I eat watermelon. Pap disappeared around that time of year, the time of Mam’s melancholy, so she stays in the house, to avoid the Pain Bird in nearby bushes. The night Pap disappeared he was taking some rice to our dog, but it seemed like our dog had run away into the nearby bushes, so Pap went looking. I saw through my window a red bird gliding along the grass following my father, curving against the wind, whistling to the moon. That’s the last time I saw him.
Now we no longer pass through the valleys and we no longer walk alone, because our aunt, the town eye woman, warned us about the Pain Bird that looms waiting for the vulnerable, following them into oblivion.
A House with No Walls
The sunlight toasted the slice of bread I left
On the kitchen table, while a blackbird picked
At the crusts.
A child entered the premises and
Took a copy of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
She sat on the porch which was no longer a porch
Reading the lines aloud.
The blue carpet ran all the way out to the front gate,
Covered in dust and debris, resembling a dirty pool,
As the mailman walked right up to the bedroom,
Positioning the mail near the pillow.
Blue crabs crawled from the beach at the back
And clawed their way into the kitchen, scaled the
Cabinet and walked right into the pot of boiling
Water on the second stove burner, the last crab
Grabbed some onions before jumping in.
The old lady with one eye, walked up from the basement
Which was not a basement, but a grave
And called the child to the kitchen.
As the child stepped off the porch and into the living room
Concrete blossomed from the ground and a steel door appeared.
And the house grew walls in all four corners,
Boxing the child in with the old lady
Causing the child to cry and ask why?
Because, the old lady said,
This is not a library and you never bring back my books
So now you’ll stay with me down in the basement
Where we’ll eat boiled blue crabs
And you’ll read Titus Andronicus
For the people I have not cooked.
Akhim Alexis is a writer born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. He is currently pursuing an MA in Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The McNeese Review, Juked, Finished Creatures, Moth Magazine, Pine Hills Review, trampset, Lucky Jefferson, Capsule Stories, The Caribbean Writer, and others.
