When the Praises and the Nissan Go Up.
​
In the baptist church, they spin
round their devotees,
ring the bronze-rimmed
school-bell to its clang,
trance into their sung
Prayer jumps, leaps of faith,
corporeal hiccup of the whole giddy frame
to a doption of worked-up drums.
Flee the ground to travel the spirit a next realm.
A next place through the door-open sky.
In your month-old car, we spin
As though devoted to earth,
an echoed banging from the back wheel
into our swirling skeletal shock.
Us in the metal-black chariot,
leap across a highway
still quiet in the luck of dawn,
the unformed traffic of this safe second.
I only hear the wheel spinning,
A record disc when the song has ended.
We stayed the grass,
the gurgling drain hanging below us,
and the crepe-pink wall behind.
On the way to the airport,
In front of a door-maker’s advertisement.
Cecil
the hunter will have:
the best part of the story (read: glorified ambush)
the electric fence (read: oversized taser)
the gall (read: sense of entitlement)
the courage to be the more animal
the safety of gun and group
the pink face full of rush
the splayed rug for his living room that he will talk about over cognac
the safari turned ego trip
the one vegetarian daughter who gets upset with him
the afternoon-warmed carcass left open in the sun
​
and his story of humble conquest that will be the only story everybody believes.
the lion will have:
a cruel death (read: in cold blood)
God’s ear in the end (read: thug mansion, because the news called them thugs)
a fair understanding of humans (read: beasts roaming the earth)
to endure the hunter’s side of the story because human is not their first language.
the world’s 30 seconds worth of teary-eyed sympathy and then a channel-switch.
their Africanness.
a captioned picture of their last moments flooding social networks to be shared.
the courage to be lion until laid down.
​
and the story of their murder, that everybody will question,
even the rest of the pride who stood there and witnessed.
Dilmah
For someone so fixed
on keeping the quiet,
for not disturbing the air
of its idle course,
to entertain nothing
louder than a soft stir of tea
against the evening ceramic.
A gold-lined rim stained her lip
to an antique thing that does
not move from its place,
ornament of the body
a pretty mouth to not
shape or shame itself
with apology, to cheapen
the charm of its myth.
For the glassy stare
at the sudden testimony,
the glazed distance strained
across the homemade
kitchen table when the truth
comes out, a brassy favor
to the hushed room.
All she does is flatten
her tongue to its roof
to quell the reflex gulp,
absorbs the scald with
the composure of a
practiced mute,
rests the cup down
and gives it a good dismissive look
as though it is the more
inconvenient thing than this talk,
​
than anything I have said to her
about her son’s son and his
wrongful hands. How he would
wait for her to disappear quietly-
a trail of unread tea leaves leading
to her bedside television set
to make a covered mouth
of me in the next room.
​
she does not ever stop sipping.
she does not stop stirring the dose
even when the pouch bursts open
under the now knife-like spoon,
a red confetti of hibiscus
spurts then settles at the base.
​
She nods without looking at me,
my bursting eyes having nobody’s
gaze to drain into,
She asks if I could go to the bank
for her before it closes this evening,
does not wait for an answer,
and starts clearing the table
of everything spilled.
