When I vomit
it will be through my forehead.
Be warned, stand far off
because the vomit will not spare you.
My ears oscillate.
Catch them when they hit against your head
or else I won’t hear you,
the piece of story
you need to share.
My eyes, in and out of their sockets
see intermittently.
They shoot out in your presence.
Will them into their sockets, if you dare.
Paste them back, if you can.
Talk to them, if you care.
My ribs grind over my spine
to eliminate my heart
that speaks a foreign language.
A heart that’s selling out,
saying I love you
even when you don’t.
My nipples too are selling out.
They engrave your name
on my abdominal wall.
Sentimental, they need a memory.
I’m freezing memory out.
It’s better without reminders.
I don’t want my nipples to finish the inscription.
The splinters of my ass
fly into the wind,
so that even you
will never remember
what it was that made you say
I have the most beautiful ass.
My knees fart faster and faster,
expel fuller and fuller,
keeping up the pressure
so my torso won’t collapse,
amidst the rapidly rising, head splitting stench
of vomited innards.
My knees fart,
my amputated arms roll,
my ribs grind.
Gallant soldiers
they know to hold their own
against your persistent indecision.
Thanks to my farting knees
and my concrete thighs
I am still upright.
It wouldn’t be so
If it weren’t for my knees.
Makhosazana Xaba is the author of These Hands and Tongues of Their Mothers.
