HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some shortlisted writers and artists the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, now that The Green Issue print magazine has been released! (For more information or to purchase your copy, visit our shop.)
Akhim Alexis
Can
Can you feel the air from
my lungs dance on your
feet when I sigh. Can this
sigh create enough release
for my chest not to feel
constricted by your disappointing
attempts to clarify or categorize
my poetry as one thing or another.
Can another color, other than green,
be used to identify the grass as being
“more pleasing” on the other side,
and can that color also camouflage,
just like green, and identify itself as
being “overcome” with envy. Can envy
allow you to pretend you don’t recognise
the millions of walking galaxies in motion
around you, the same dark richness and
black goddesses who sit majestically
next to you in the office, a milky way
of thick thighs and full lips.
Can the elderly lady with the thick
thighs and the full lips, who sits next
to me at church, talk to me without
the auto tune of the book, so I can
understand her a bit more, hear her voice
without the man in the sky speaking for her.
Can the man in the sky hurry up and visit,
because the riverside is beginning to get
a bit too packed with debris, and can no longer
hold all these burdens.
Akhim Alexis is a writer born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago who is inspired by his mother Simone, who also writes poetry. He is currently pursuing an MA in Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. His most recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crêpe & Penn, McNeese Review, Camwood Literary Magazine, Capsule Stories and The Caribbean Writer.