Development / joanne hillhouse

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There’s a part of her that wants to keep it just so,
Even as the sound of rushing water
Competes with the groan of the backhoe
Hard-hat at the controls, cutting
A swath through the coast
And the gate is closed
And the locals enter, freely, no more

And she wonders, how many more

Days like this
Being able to sit, just so
Here, on a beach no one
Really owns
Wondering absently
Where the rolling waves go when they
Dip below her horizon

•••

Joanne Hillhouse is the author of three novels, The Boy From Willow Bend (Macmillan; Hansib), Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, (Macmillan, 2004), and Oh Gad! (Strebor/Atria/Simon * Schuster 2012). She was awarded the Michael and Marilee Fairbanks International Fellowship in 2008 to attend the Breadloaf Writers Conference in Vermont, and the 2011 David Hough Literary Prize from The Caribbean Writer. Her poetry has appeared in Ma Comère: Journal of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars, The Caribbean Writer, Calabash: A Journal of Caribbean Arts and Letters, tongues of the ocean, Anansesem, Small Axe Literary Salon and Poui: Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing. She is the founder and director of the Wadadli Youth Pen Prize, an esteemed writing competition for young writers of Antigua.

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