Citizen Journalism Workshops 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

Yesterday
I thought of you
coming through the door
to my openness.
But you did not come.
He did
Today
in the green shirt
my mind saw
you wearing.
And we shared what we had wanted
right there
in the office
in the afternoon
with all our clothes on
electric and unstoppable
I had to ask him how
When you come
will you wear
a green shirt?

By Myesha Jenkins