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by Sarah Lubala i On Tuesday you wake walk the back stairs to find a bird half dead and thrashing stunned by its own purpose You count the split wing the muffled heart— smallest of all seeds ii The corridors are the loudest an artery of wailing what nicks the heart drawn tight across all things? iii I’ve known rage the height of a woman the cloying scent of relaxer holds the strongest memory the sweet scabbing the hairdresser’s instructions: ‘Let me know when it starts to burn’ iv I think often of your world the quotidian washing the nightly mewling of the street cat the sun-blind luck of ordinary days v My old roommate had a razor blade secreted in her bra What had the years been to her? She read her Bible nightly Repeated the words: ‘burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise’ vi There are rules ‘No hookups’ I dream of scarred fingers and stonewashed linen Summering at the window How mere touch is abundance in the lack vii The doctor asks if I know anything of ‘intergenerational trauma’ I think of my grandmother thirteen and wed the chicken coup in red earth the kneaded dough of girl-limbs the clutch of a doll in one arm a baby in the other viii They all want to know what I’ll do when I’m ‘out there’ God with me: I’ll die, and I’ll return; I’ll wound, and I’ll be wounded I’ll swallow the white throat of fear  Sarah Lubala is a Congolese-born South African writer. She has been shortlisted for the Gerald Kraak Award and The Brittle Paper Poetry Award. Her work has been published in Brittle Paper, The Missing Slate, Apogee Journal, as well as The Gerald Kraak Anthology As You Like It, Botsoso’s 2018 Poetry from Public and Private Places and the African Collective’s Best New African Poets 2018 Anthology. |