The grief of my country is sitting in the corner of my stomach. A pigheaded bacteriumโ it is going nowhere. A garrison in my small intestines;a dogged settler army of worms laying ambush. I cannot throw up, there are razor-wires dipped in my throat. The goddamn grief blocked! From the broken spoon,I have been eating Herr Coloniser! I will digest you; your bones with fluoric acidsโwill dissolve you in…
My son took a bathput on new clothes,left home,riding a horselike a prince;came homeas kilos of ripped flesh. one foggy winter day,some two decades ago,my brotherlost his fingers;an eagle feastedon his eyes. meadows, haunted hamletswhere the grass grows uphill-armed men storm the villageand take men out of their houses,beat themand force them to carry their…
I. why elsewhen elsedo you put our narratives on a weighing scale?exceptwhen there’s your familiar bloodpolitically differentiated from our familiar bloodtogether calling out for help on our streets.(pray ask when has blood ever left my streets?)Quite a time for you to suddenly wake up, no? I heard your reality is throbbing like an inconsolable ache…
I. In the language of a city inseminated with fallen teeth and broken bones. I dream in the language of dead. I dream: my mother’s poems resemble the dark blotch on my left temple. a green horse kneels beside the body of a dead boy. a rat nips at my only letter addressed to the…
My country still churns poetry out of mutilated migrant labourers.The skeletal remnants of a metropolitan do not stir the nationโs conscience.Death lies snuggled in the palms of my state,destruction kneaded on the cold skies.Humans lie like scattered petals on roads and roofs.Artistic stimulation for some.Ghost buildings are standing like cardboard boxes,perforated by the needles of…