Issue 4

The Idea of Marcel
By MARIE-HELENE BERTINO It had been three months since the breakup and Emily was reclaiming relationship landmarks. She arranged to meet her date at what had been her and Marcel’s second-favorite café. The forecast was rain. A pear-colored umbrella hung over the chair where Emily sat wearing a pear-colored skirt, drinking water and breathing. On a tree outside, two birds chased…
Histoplasmosis: A Guide's Instruction at the Cave
By INGRID DE KOK If after a few weeks you find yourself coughing, your chest laced in a corset of steel, tell your doctor you were here. Tell him about the bats, their investment in the dark, their droppings spongy fudge which you probably tramped on in the cave, the spores you may have breathed now inhabiting your lung tissue,…
The Poet in Rome: Richard Wilbur in Postwar Italy
By ROBERT BAGG I. Richard Wilbur first visited Rome with the American Fifth  Army that liberated the city, just behind the fleeing Germans, on 5 June 1944.  By 10:00 p.m., his division, the 36th Texans, in trucks, in jeeps, and on mobile artillery, followed the tanks of the First Armored Division into the southern outskirts of Rome, where it paused, expecting…
Portraits of Land and Sea
By AMY SANDE-FRIEDMAN There is a long history of artists going out into the natural  world to portray its beauty and learn its secrets. Among the most well known are artists like Claude Monet, who painted from his Giverny garden in France, depicting the shifting light and seasonal changes, and naturalists like James Audubon, who created detailed illustrations of American birds that…
A Place in the Sun
By JENNIFER HAIGH They drove east through the desert towns: Hesperia to Victorville to Barstow to Yermo, past the dusty bed of Soda Lake, dry now, a ghostly crater waiting for rain. The route was familiar, a memory stored in his bones. The return trip, Sandy had driven in every condition—exhausted, panicked, blind drunk, sick with shame. But the eastbound journey…
Doleo Ergo Sum
By ROBERT EARLE After Dostoevsky died and interest in The Brothers Karamazov  waned, my loquacious Uncle Boris kept the tale going for a few years. After all, he was Dostoevsky’s source in the first place. Then Boris passed away and left me his properties in the boring provincial town of Skotoprigonyevsk, which he loved so much in his conservative, snoopy way, and…
The Land Up North
By NICOLA WALDRON We bought it to build a dream on, to propagate. He wanted to plant fruit trees and dig a pond; I imagined a center for healing, where women would come to believe again in possibility. We would build writing sheds, one for each of us, and a ring of rustic cabins for the women. In the mornings, we…
Writer
By HAIDEE KRUGER I keep my tools hidden, until the sun rasps its black breath over the suburbs. Only then do I edge from my demure murmuring disguise, carrying my pen like an axe, waiting in the underbrush for the first bloodwarm faces to appear. I like to…
The Window
By MAKHOSAZANA XABA You fitted so snugly through the window I opened wide for you. Then you shut it with a bang giving me your back. The shards, too small, took forever to gather. I put them in that wooden bowl you made. Then I bought shatter-proof glass, lined it with black blinds that do not open, so that I will…
Widowhood in the Dementia Ward
By FINUALA DOWLING “Oh my God, I’m so pleased to see you,” she says from her nest of blankets. “I’ve been meaning to ask— How is your father? How is Paddy?” “He died,” I say, remembering 1974. “Good heavens, now you tell me! How lucky he is.” “You could join him,” I suggest. “I didn’t like him that much,” she…
Brief Fling in the Dementia Ward
By FINUALA DOWLING My mother has a brief flirtation with Mr. Otto, a rare male in Frail Care. He has the look of a Slavic conductor —sweeping, side-parted silver locks offset his visible nappy line. “How odd,” Ma says of Mr. Otto, “to meet the love of one’s life in a kitchen” and to him, within hearing of the nurses:…
Odd One Out in the Dementia Ward
By FINUALA DOWLING It’s a cold, bleak day which might explain why she says: “This is my daughter Nuala, who has come all the way from South Africa to visit me.” “Though,” she adds, looking at the nurse, “by the looks of you, you come from there too.” Well satisfied with her own civility, she whispers: “I was going to…
How I Knew It Wasn't Me
By FINUALA DOWLING I only realised I was at risk when my brother phoned to check if I was still alive— he’d heard it on the radio: a woman fitting my description apparently wept on the harbour wall before she dived. “So it wasn’t you?” a query rising in his tone. I, too—as I replied—couldn’t help sounding unconvinced, as if searching…
He Pleaded Ignorance
By KOLBUS MOOLMAN He did not know what the sky was made of. He did not know what fire tasted like. He did not know how far away from the earth the truth was. He did not know how long a man could survive without any covering over his body. Such as skin. He did not know the current market value…
Hunger
By KOLBUS MOOLMAN And God gave the man little wingless birds, small as a shock, to eat while He was away. And a cup the size of a scab, in case His return was delayed, and the rain ran out. But the man ate all the birds on the first day, he was so hungry, and by the second, the scab…
The Wrist
By KOLBUS MOOLMAN from the poem cycle Anatomy The wrist, the right one, is a wrench. The wrist, not the left, is rust. It is red metal amongst stone. It is brittle tin. It is clanking iron. The wrist is unsettled. It does not join or turn or fold or meet. It grinds, stone against stone, mid-day sunlight against…
If Only the Tswanas Could Dance
By LESEGO RAMPOLOKENG from Longo Dongoa & the Pocket Crucified We asked for social overhaul  Got a power-hall roll-CALL & the world coming down to play ball On the site of our umbilical burial tick it off the life-wreck list our Calvary is Renovation of rottenness. Scratching the future in the ruins Patriotic remnants of nuclear fall-out ideals They overrule…
This is the Sea
By RUSTUM KOZAIN (After a photograph by Victor Dlamini) There is that sea, deep sometimes as the heart at dusk, the shine on its face soon to fade. There is that caravel drifting in and all it brings: a load of good and the bad unreckoned by the quartermaster. The homing birds that come or go. The sun that’s set, now…
Fog
By RUSTUM KOZAIN 4 a.m. Streets under fog. Streetlights gone. Except a few down the road and the moon’s halo easily obscured by a plume of breath laced with nicotine and the meagre consolation of the last round from the last open bar now closed, and its glow also gone. From the bay, a foghorn. A long, low note from watch’s…
City
By MXOLISI NYEZWA i have lived to discover a city, an open road, a bucket of milk, and two gentle doves. i have discovered in myself two frightened birds with miles of dirt road to fly. in the forest hills spiders and black dogs clamoured. in the corpses of yellow flowers a rainbow spun across a darkened sky. i lived in…
San People
By MXOLISI NYEZWA i’m linking things i’m beginning to see the length of this organ, my dying land all the mistakes my god has learned they say the body is wise in truth and in suffering biding a time that knows no limits i’m linking things i’m beginning to see what became of the san people who can tell…
New Country
By MXOLISI NYEZWA I new country towards you i breathe slowly towards your self-demeaning humour new country i bow down slowly towards you towards you little is left lovers have deserted the street that survives without a name. II men and women with money lower your proud flags because you were born you will not rest because of your stealthy height…
From Malikhanye
By MXOLISI NYEZWA for my son malikhanye liyema nyezwa who died on 2 august 2007 aged 3 months how do i say this, that once your eyes were like topaz and your heart clean as jasmine in the dense forests i follow the black traces of your lashes in the empty memory of lost time my feet tumble against…
My Intimate
By GABEBA BADEROON On the anniversary of 20 March 2003 I sense you close, a part of you, your stiff shirt, your hand, never the whole. Language, its shape and certain completeness, that is you and I now, my Intimate. A long and silent oneness hangs like wire between us. I turn my head toward your voice. There is nothing…
Axis and Revolution
By GABEBA BADEROON Glass door in a glass wall, screen of reflections, rain- streaks, fingerprints, slips the catch of the lock, swings slowly open, axis and revolution, reflecting a compass of sky, trees, the sun in rain, windows of the houses opposite, me watching. Flashing glass on glass, the door fans its cards of mirrors. Reflected in the door, I gleam…
Remembering S-21, Cambodia
By FIONA ZERBST —for Vann Nath I. This was a school before it was wire and silence. Oleander scented the sunlit courtyard. This was a school, with blackboards, white- and-tan-tiled floors. Children filled the concrete stairwells. Then it was wire, shackles, prisoners taken from their families. They were beaten, starved, herded like children, helpless, fed a gruel of watery rice.…
Volcanic
By FIONA ZERBST Risk and aftershock, this love that leaps desire. I cannot turn my face from you, so ash will spill on lids— residual tears— and flame will kiss my mouth. I cannot turn, and this is good. I know, now, that the waters boil below volcanic ash, and fire can never really burn out, but attaches to the deeper…
V. A. Haunted
By KHULILE NXUMALO from Requiem for This House the father will definitely be burnt the mother too, will be burnt the little boys are then, already burnt even the miracles the little girl had made, will get burned, the little girl’s mind was always awake circuited words in her brain would all the time foreshock, would all the time see…
Alive
By MALIKA NDLOVU from Invisible Earthquake 27th May, 00h44 I write to keep you alive. I write to resist killing myself In little do-able ways, Lose days, dreaming of reunion with you. I write to cleanse myself, To release the river of sorrow That circles and sometimes swallows me. I write to remember the instants of acceptance, A stream of…
Next Year I Want to Run the Comrades Marathon
By VONANI BILA (after discovering that I weigh 90 kilograms before the age of 40) chubbiness is weighing me down like a tree that can’t carry its branches anymore i don’t want to be brushed aside so easily by the wind of love like rugged absentminded sweating men with bellies of pap, tripe & beer i want to run, crawl &…
Mandela at 91
By VONANI BILA Old, frail & with an unsteady gait charlatans drag you to an election rally somewhere in a stadium in port elizabeth somewhere in a stadium in johannesburg Madiba, you raise a clenched fist steadfastly urge the nation not to throw in the towel yet on the bruised & battered movement in the ring the maddening crowds yell in…
A Perfect Love
By KATHERINE KILALEA You are a tortoise in a hard hat. I am a heart growing gallons and gallons of hair. You made it with me: a perfect love, which went hard from the softness of its innards. And though all the love went elsewhere, you hung around, like a gas, like sand in my bikini pants. Katharine…
The Way Birds Stand
By KATHERINE KILALEA Why are you so sad, Girl, the fishermen ask. As a colander drains, as shoes to feet, as he who smokes will invariably say yes to coffee, so a girl watching a group of gulls must be a soul in torment or lack company, or maybe a rod, the technology to stave off loneliness. Tackle arcs and whizzes.…
The Archivist
By GENNA GARDINI The past clicks us into focus. There’s a slid-hinge to the edit. In this photo, your father frames you like a fish he wants to remember— slipped and tin, temporarily pliable, propped on his knee. Let’s take your brother, here, blue-faced and stuffed, full of berries out the bottom of the backyard, off the bramble of his…
Introduction
By KELWYN SOL Liberation in South Africa and the first free elections, in 1994, unleashed a social and cultural energy and sense of possibility. In the two decades since then, there has been an explosion of innovation in South African poetry, with a number of poets experimenting with fresh perspectives and themes. In a society still bearing the effects of…
Why I Am Not an Engineer
By ROBERT BEROLD thanks, frank o’hara I am not an engineer. but I studied to be one. those days, the ’60s, we went to varsity in shorts and long socks and threw paper aeroplanes in class. chem.eng. was a tough course. the theoreticians did well but the real engineers, the guys who drank beers and fixed their own cars, failed. we…
The Light
By ROBERT BEROLD A boomslang stretches out to probe a nest. A cloud of birds surrounds it, frantic. It slinks across to eat the eggs, swerves back into the foliage, cuts the light in two. * A baboon barks on the ridge. The sun is blind and white, the sunspots flare and plunge. In the mountains the radio signal comes…
Poet's Report to FIFA
By ANGIFI PROCTOR DLADLA And so the sons and daughters of Mother Earth descended on our airports. How pleasing to the soul witnessing global smiles brightening up our cities. And so used to navel-gazing, we could not believe our eyes. How pleasing to the soul witnessing a ball rounding off colours and tongues to One Family. And so the FIFA Contest…
Today I Do Not Love My Country
By INGRID DE KOK South Africa, May 2008 Today I do not love my country. It is venal, it is cruel. Lies are open sewers in the street.  Threats scarify the walls. Tomorrow I may defend my land  when others X-ray the evidence: feral shadows, short sharp knives. I may argue our grievous inheritance. On Wednesday I may let the…
Shards
By INGRID DE KOK Nirox, near the Cradle of Humankind, Magaliesberg 1. Early Night's cold spittle has tipped tall grasses. Pools of cool light bathe our eyes for an hour as reeds weave baskets out of morning air. A moorhen's four chicks are balls of soot across her bow. The brown hyena was here but has gone to its lair,…