No one will notice the Smarties.
Mum says fifty-six bad words on the
phone to Jamaica.
She is not impressed when you tell
her so.
“Keep out of adult conversations,”
she warns,
her mouth growing tight.
The pastor makes twenty-four
references to hell
in the sermon at church and forgets
to talk
about love. Granddad falls asleep.
If your Bible has pictures
you should color them in and count
how many men in the church wear
white socks and black shoes.
Count the bitten fingernails and
how many people cry silently during
prayer.
Count the number of cars that
afternoon before your mother,
tired and lovely, pulls up on the
pavement to collect you.
Count how many people shake their
head at her red nails, her tight jeans.
She looks like a star and they’re
jealous.
You can fit the word lonely
four hundred and sixteen times
on the back of that same piece of
paper.
Dad will say, “Don’t be silly. Your
brother will be out of hospital soon.”
Mum will be too stressed to talk.
You will go to live at Grandma’s,
spending days drinking rooibos out
of egg cups,
studying God’s word and watching
the sun.
You will learn to fear
The Most High
also
count how many times the
King James Bible uses the words thee,
thou and thy.
Keep a proper tally. Granddad can
play any song on the harmonica.
Test him. He likes to be tested
(until he doesn’t know the answer.
Then he will get angry
and say things he doesn’t mean).
There are one hundred and twenty-
seven roses
on the wallpaper in your new room.
There were more than that but you
picked some away.
Your brother has been gone now for
two months straight and
nobody will tell you anything.
Count how many
family friends are praying for you.
There are sixty-four red grapes on
the bunch
eat one after the other, fast
without stopping.
Maybe you can visit the hospital too.
inconvenience
I’ll never understand you,
but my God,
how I want you.
You happen very suddenly
before I have time to do what I usually do
to stay safe.
I try it all, to find you arrogant, dull,
unkind. Nothing works
and I dream you up
like a fiend.
You flick your eyes over me
and it goes straight to my
fourth brain. Even your
breathing excites me.
And we all know
the dangers that lie ahead. My cells make room
for you.
My breathing is light
My head is filled silly
My reason darkens.
coordinates
Every time I travel
I meet myself a little more.
Sometimes you have to leave all your cities
to fall in love
and now I am
time zones apart from
most of my lovers,
some lives apart from the others.
who was doing what and where
She was in the kitchen. Not crying.
Not crying, I said.
He was in the hallway
already gone,
like the rest of them.
We were in the living room. Not
caring. Not caring, mind you.
Perhaps we did. Perhaps we cared
(a bit).
Perhaps she did a bit of crying too.
on hearing he hit his girlfriend
Your brother shuffles in his seat
looking uncomfortable when you say,
“What if someone were to do that to
me,” and mumbles, “I’d fuck them
up. You know I’d fuck them up.”
He cannot look you in the eye today.
It’s the one time in twentysomething
years that you don’t instinctively feel
the need to make him feel better
about himself
or lament the plight of mixed-up
black boys from broken homes
or consider the flawed system
it’s the one time in twentysomething
years
that he’s more the culprit
much less the victim
so you clear your throat
(purposefully)
and say,
“That’s inexcusable and one corner I
won’t stand in to fight for you
so you’d better talk. Now.”
So you sit down to talk
and he cries, mostly.
when they ask
When they ask you how you are
don’t say fearful. Narrow your eyes
and kiss your teeth but don’t say
afraid.
Don’t say more scared than
ever before, or floundering.
Don’t say lost without
cause or that you’re not always sure
you can make it.
Straighten that back
you are sex. Look like sex.
Wipe the blood from yourself.
Don’t tell them what went on when
the sun was busy in another street.
Do that Thing The People Do.
The people who are fine, fine, fine
until you get home and find them
gone, gone, gone.
Keep suffering because it’s your God-
Given Right.
Brawl with your being. Fight the bad
fight.
Fight.
If they ask you how you are
don’t say stolen. Don’t say forgotten,
passed over,
ignored. Don’t you dare say Orphan.
Don’t say beaten by the system
oppressed and disturbed
and don’t you dare say disappointed
don’t you dare say damaged.
Smile.
Smile with all of your teeth, even
the rotting ones.
Even the rotting ones.
to the elders
I cannot find the God you serve
and I have been known to stay out all
night, searching.
history
1.
A new man kissed me
when I was sixteen
and
not on the mouth
either.
Now granted, he was looking after me
and I was too old
for my own good.
And granted he had a wife
and I had a mother
an awful stepdad and a little brother
an
d granted
I wanted to die
most days.
Granted he didn’t take my
virginity
—that was long gone
but something of a different kind
left me.
no.
left me
I don’t think so
left me
I don’t feel good when . . .
left me
or
honestly
they were never mine.
2.
The man who kissed me
wanted to leave his wife
and right away, too.
Now, granted he was moving too fast
and I wanted out.
And granted he liked a drink
and by then so did I.
I left though, in the end.
Two cases of beer and a thirst for something else.
I’m still looking for
the words to get me out
of these things.
untitled 1
If you’re afraid to write it,
that’s a good sign.
I suppose you know you’re writing the
truth when you’re terrified.
poetry
Nobody is saying anything at the
dinner table tonight,
because everyone is too angry.
The only noise is the clinking of
fine silver on bone china and
the sound of other people’s children
playing outside
but this will give you poetry.
There is no knife in the kitchen sharp
enough to cut the tension
and your grandmother’s hands are
shaking.
The meat and yam stick in your
throat
and you do not dare even to whisper,
please pass the salt,
but this will give you poetry.
Your father is breathing out of his
mouth
he is set to beat the spark out of you
tonight
for reasons he isn’t even sure of
himself yet.
You will come away bruised.
You will come away bruised
but this will give you poetry.
The bruising will shatter.
The bruising will shatter into
black diamond.
No one will sit beside you in class.
Maybe your life will work.
Most likely it won’t at first
but that
will give you poetry.
wine
It’s never too late to be wise.
See how your spirit has been
fermenting.
another thing that happened
We are in the car.
I am screaming at my mother
taste in men,
asking her why she always chooses
the ones who stare at my breasts
through my nightdress
or the ones who steal her money
or cheat or disappear
and this time she doesn’t slap me
in the mouth.
She stares ahead, unblinking. Tells me
about her mother’s father,
a good-looking man with glinting
eyes and a round face
who followed her into a room when
she was eleven and forced her onto her back.
We are in the car.
I am somewhere between eight and twenty
and she is somewhere between
nineteen and thirty-five
but I am not completely sure of the
ages. They are melting into each other,
swirling out of reach
because this is a dream, you see, and I
am telling her about the gangly, tall,
awful man that she is with
the one who everyone calls
handsome.
The one who hides food and
tries to walk in on me in the bathtub.
The only conversation that we ever
had about all of this
(the only conversation that actually
really happened)
was when I was thirteen and we were
arguing in the living room
(over the very same man)
and she was going to hit me
and said,
“My grandfather tried to rape me.
Count yourself lucky.”
I was stunned into silence. I did not
want to imagine something so terrible
happening
or almost happening to her
and besides, I had already made her a
non-ally.
She wanted to talk. She needed to
talk.
How I wish I had asked even one
question
but it is too late now.
I was too young and
she died young
alone in a hospice while I was living
far away, mostly unavailable.
My mother is with me most nights, though.
She was is my first love.
I dream her fiercely
and in those dreams I love her
and get angry and shake her
and bite, grind my teeth
and wake up,
full of everything.
untitled 2
Seize that loveliness.
It has always been yours.
dankyes (Mwaghavul)
Today is the first day
of the rest of it.
Of course there will be other first
days
but none exactly like this.
acknowledgments
nayyirah melissa emilyne rosa
nickque tapiwa
marcia.
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