The Late Arrival of the Light
When you find yourself alone without a winter coat, when mourning holds you open with its fierce grace, when you find out that every life is a ghost story, you can wade out through the garden of the darkness and lie down and look up at the wild stars, the silent flames that cradled you…
Three Poems
Lullaby for Anokuhle sweet child of the moon resurrect the flames of hope with your divine smiles when diabetes creates despair paint me love with your pure eyes in this city that knows no peace where tattered dreams of black youth are forgotten your voice is a melody that drowns out sounds of gunshots…
This Poem Must Be About
something of unbearable consequence something massive, like the abscission of daffodils (in a green glass vase on a windowsill) and the way they embody a matter of great importance possibly the sadness of the ageing process beauty’s brief skin or our inevitable deaths otherwise it runs the risk of being just another poem about flowers …
Unusual Solitary Escapades
You’ve lived so long inside the empty house, you go nuts: light beams ricochet off the wall, becoming something from your past—maybe a younger you, innocent and stubborn, writing wishes with your milk tooth. A glowing girl walks in through the wall, you cry with your face buried deep inside her flawless palm. Your father…
Golden Shovel in the Voice of Margot Begemann
I crumple marriage offers made by fishermen, masons, bakers of brioche, for I know my consecration is to marry the great Van Gogh. Look at history and see men of genius wrecked before there is the chance for one brave girl to swoop down, dangerous to his enemies and doubters, the critics and hecklers,…
Three Poems
Absence I taught myself to live without him, an orphan sorting through rubbish for scraps. Crippled, I fashioned crutches from my own insights, hobbling forlorn through shameful streets, begging for change. I was a gecko wriggling away from a cat’s sharp claws. Stump-tailed, I waited, knowing it would grow back. I mouthed words in…
To Crawl Back into a Home
tonight I open my body into the pages of the bible. i have hidden God inside my tongue, that’s how he hears while I’m yet speaking. i find a lie inside my closet, hanging memories of sand that taught me to build a kind of babel here. i have forgotten how to give a hand…
Two Poems
Identity Crisis You were the Wife of Bath and I was Claudius Ptolemy. I was your sixth or seventh husband and you were my invisible lover, Mrs. Succubus. We played games in the sack by candlelight. We crossed deserts. Some days we didn’t even know each other. Little wonder I was so confused. How…
Two Poems
Reflections written during travels in Japan The sun and moon without light. Sky and earth in darkness. Who can uplift the sinking world of women? I pawned my jewels to sail across the open seas, parting from my children as I left the border at Jade Gate. Unbinding my feet to pour out a…
Two Poems
On Deserving/ Undeserving Love i I am walking down memory lane, and the streetlights cast my path with wreaths from our dead marriage. I stop at a cursed tree, pregnant with affliction. Jutting offspring of dried-up leaves; horses and mules eat of. A thrum after plucking. You are that galloping wind returning to me…
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