Poetry Blog

Cities stand

like ravished women

called Maputo, Accra, Mombasa;

on a beach

of bleached memory,

they are torn, shattered, only half-decent,

with that lewd, innocent look around the eyes

that girls get when they’ve been used too soon:

they know how to please and how to get

what they need. They watch sailors come

and go. The waves blow the mind

back to the first sharp pain as

hard men forced themselves into the house of dreams

and they bled history

I will never sleep again
the memory of my kind
tossed in the veld
haunts my every day and night
Woman girls on the way to a party
I cannot speak of what was done to them

panties stuff their mouths
open thighs slick with blood and semen
hands tied with barbed wire
eyes bulging in horror

The neighbors came to gawk at their sprawled nakedness
A woman covered their corpses with her blankets
In the sun for six hours before the police came

For Nelito, Didi, Thembinkhosi and Walter

Old and ugly as you are
neck rolls and big tummy
hair growing out of your ears
you think that sweet young thing
should be yours tonight?
Grinning and talking loud
over your beer after beer after beer
sloppy and greasy with your crack showing.
What do you want with that child?
What does that child want with you?

Malume, you are more than that
you are more than that!
 

By Myesha Jenkins

If you are there on my path in the night
I would consider sharing a silent moment with you.
But do not ask to join my solitude
it is mine to walk into
there is much to ponder and I am already weary
I will not suffer your intrusion