l o v e ?

you left
for work
without
a word,
and I
felt nuts;

that day
as I
was dying:
a bird
caught in
your barb,

twilight
occurred,
and I
felt nuts
again.

when you
got home
and rang,
I went
to get
the door
with my
left hand.

Sarah Mkhonza's "Woman in a Tree"

In this collection of poems, Sarah Mkhonza retraces her escape from Swaziland to the United States, where the images that haunt her also set her free.

"Woman in a Tree" reflects some of Sarah Mkhonza's experiences inside and outside her home in Swaziland. This important volume of poetry is filled with sadness, laughter, and the bitter taste of exile as Mkhonza reveals her concern for local clan customs and reacts to the violence against women and the subverted democracy in the hands of the ruling class. She is telling us her story with 'red ochre spread on every leaf.'
[continue there...]

THE SUNDAY EMERGENCY

On a bloody Sunday journey
At the emergency room of a hospital
In a town called Manzini
In a country called Swaziland
The weekend plays soccer
On the bodies of women.
The suffering kills me inside.
Seen everywhere, it invades me—
Women limping, hips dislocated,
Heads bandaged,
My niece with no eye, but a marble in the socket,
My niece dead, nothing but a memory.
When does it end, this beating of women?

Answer me! My anxiety fails me,
For I am lunar, I will go mad
And run away in the night, crying murder all over.
Somebody is mad and not me;
Somebody inside me sees.
I just speak for all,
I do.
© Sarah Mkhonza

----------
sarah mkhonza, woman in a tree, swazi poetry

Happy birthday, Ntozake!

* Born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey to Paul T. Williams (namesake), a surgeon, and Eloise Williams, a psychiatric social worker and educator. The oldest of four children of an upper middle class family.

* Moved to a then, racially segregated St. Louis at the age of eight (1956/57). Lived there for five years and enjoyed music, dance, art, literature, and opera. Was even bussed to a German-American school where she suffered blatant racism as a part of the Brown versus Board of Education decision.

* As a part of a rich intellectual family, she was an avid reader of great authors to include Jean Genet, Herman Melville, and Langston Hughes. She also came in contact with great musicians and singers like Dizzy Gillespie, Chuck Berry, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Josephine Baker, all friends of her parents. W.E.B. DuBois was also a family visitor.

* Returned to New Jersey at age thirteen (1961/62) where she completed high school and became increasingly aware of the inequities of the American society on black females.
[continue]

Ntozake¹ Shange was born on 18 October 1948. Happy birthday to her.

(1) Ntozake is isiZulu for "her own things," suggesting "she who brings her own things," when it is someone's name. By comparison, in Sesotho, my mother tongue, it is "Nthotsaka," which naturally sounds like its isiZulu counterpart.

with no immediate cause


every 3 minutes a woman is beaten
every five minutes a
woman is raped/every ten minutes
a lil girl is molested
yet i rode the subway today
i sat next to an old man who
may have beaten his old wife
3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago
he might have sodomized his
daughter but i sat there
cuz the young men on the train
might beat some young women
later in the day or tomorrow
i might not shut my door fast
every 3 minutes it happens
some woman’s innocence
rushes to her cheeks/pours from her mouth
like the betsy wetsy dolls have been torn
apart/their mouths
menses red & split/every
three minutes a shoulder
is jammed through plaster and the oven door/
chairs push thru the rib cage/hot water or
boiling sperm decorate her body
i rode the subway today
& bought a paper from a
man who might
have held his old lady onto
a hot pressing iron/i don’t know
maybe he catches lil girls in the
park & rips open their behinds
with steel rods/i can’t decide
what he might have done i only
know every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes every 10 minutes/so
i bought the paper
looking for the announcement
the discovery/of the dismembered
woman’s body/the
victims have not all been
identified/today they are
naked and dead/refuse to
testify/one girl out of 10’s not
coherent/i took the coffee
& spit it up/i found an
announcement/not the woman’s
bloated body in the river/floating
not the child bleeding in the
59th street corridor/not the baby
broken on the floor/
there is some concern
that alleged battered women
might start to murder their
husbands & lovers with no
immediate cause”

i spit up i vomit i am screaming
we all have immediate cause
every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes
every 10 minutes
every day
women’s bodies are found
in alleys & bedrooms/at the top of the stairs
before i ride the subway/buy a paper/drink
coffee/i must know/
have you hurt a woman today
did you beat a woman today
throw a child across a room
are the lil girl’s panties
in yr pocket

did you hurt a woman today
i have to ask these obscene questions
the authorities require me to
establish
immediate cause
every three minutes
every five minutes
every ten minutes
every day.
© Ntozake Shange

"Minor Miracle," by Marilyn Nelson

Which reminds me of another knock-on-wood
memory. I was cycling with a male friend,
through a small midwestern town. We came to a 4-way
stop and stopped, chatting. As we started again,
a rusty old pick-up truck, ignoring the stop sign,
hurricaned past scant inches from our front wheels.
My partner called, "Hey, that was a 4-way stop!"
The truck driver, stringy blond hair a long fringe
under his brand-name beer cap, looked back and yelled,
"You fucking niggers!"
And sped off.
My friend and I looked at each other and shook our heads.
We remounted our bikes and headed out of town.
We were pedaling through a clear blue afternoon
between two fields of almost-ripened wheat
bordered by cornflowers and Queen Anne's lace
when we heard an unmuffled motor, a honk-honking.
We stopped, closed ranks, made fists.
It was the same truck. It pulled over.
A tall, very much in shape young white guy slid out:
greasy jeans, homemade finger tattoos, probably
a Marine Corps boot-camp footlockerful
of martial arts techniques.

"What did you say back there!" he shouted.
My friend said, "I said it was a 4-way stop.
You went through it."
"And what did I say?" the white guy asked.
"You said: 'You fucking niggers.'"
The afternoon froze.

"Well," said the white guy,
shoving his hands into his pockets
and pushing dirt around with the pointed toe of his boot,
"I just want to say I'm sorry."
He climbed back into his truck
and drove away.
© Marilyn Nelson
[source...]

An attractive, cold-hearted tease

An attractive, cold-hearted tease
Makes all men get down on their knease.
If they try to run
Before she is dun,
She throws away the goddamn kease.

Read more limericks with this first line at Mad Kane's place.

The Mountain at Night

(for Lineo, 'Masekoja and 'Makananelo)

Everyone needs something. A dime a day. After
Swallowing me my mother needed to empty me,
And among tracks left by ancestral feet she had me.
Thaba Bosiu, the mountain at night. We needed
Its plateau at the top to help us crush enemy skulls
Into chalk, with stone and brick, for the king had
Built his village there, and that mountain grew at night,
Making passes steep to keep foes out, locking the door.
The thing is, when my cradle rocked the clay floor
Of my mother's hut, nobody was allowed near if I
wasn't asleep. Oh, I don't know, but my parents I think
Held their breath when approaching me, and put
Their ears against the lilac of my mouth to hear
The whirr of my lungs, till I heaved and let go of it,
And shivered down as they traipsed into their room
To get on with what parents do on a winter's night,
Relieved that life could be a product of their genes too.
They needed to feel each other down like teens
Groping in the dark: I remember, or think I do,
The best of my parents heaving in that room,
Setting each other off. When I was older I met
A girl who, like my mother, couldn’t stomach lumps;
We'd lie there, fucking, or asleep, clinging like spoons.
Three spoons if you counted the child whose life
At the turn of the millennium when gods gave gifts,
Was about to enter itself, on top of me, and my wife.

Happy Birthday, Desmond!

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
~Desmond Tutu

Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born on 7 October 1931. Happy birthday to him. In the photo he is reacting to testimony on Apartheid presented during a Truth and Reconciliation session in his native South Africa. He chaired the committee and in 1999 was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for his work there.

He has recently drawn fire for criticising some of Israel's actions against Palestinians.

Stevie Wonder (So What the Fuss)