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Granddad
by Tinashe Mushakavanhu
Every morning
Granddad sits on a log
Behind the hut
Absorbing heat
Like a solar panel
He sits still
Eyes fixed yonder
Smoking a pipe
And thin strings of grey smoke
Weave into a thick cloud
Granddad sits upright
Mechanical
Like a chauffer
Steering the world
Into motion
He talks and whispers
To the trees and hens
Keeping him company
In the twilight of his days
Premonitions
by Tinashe Mushakavanhu
She came to me
In a dream
Wearing only panties
To sing me a lullaby
When I tried to grab her
Clothe her with human
Warmth, a loud knock
Awakened me
Two policemen had come
To pick me up
For sexual charges
Yesterday I had seen
The little girl Nandi
Abandoned and crying
Sitting in the rain
I took her into my room
And got carried away
Entrepreneurship
by Tinashe Mushakavanhu
A faded signboard
hung on our sagging fence
reads:
WE DIE FADED JEANS
but on the gate
instead hangs
an exhibit –
a threadbare napkin
soiled and holed
a flag of indigenous
entrepreneurship
waving our poverty
to passer-bys
Bad Trip
by Elisabeth Dell
From the light of the smoke, coke, and candy machines
In a hostel lobby at 3am with Billy Holiday
My consciousness is an anchor
Into this slouch, into this sea of giving in
It might just be coming off the drugs like
fog so thick you can’t see your hands
Or it might be the emptiness of love
In this Amsterdam of one night stands and live sex shows where she just
laid there and looked at me.
And Julie, my blue angel, who people would stop on the street and point
to her eyes
Shitting out mushrooms in a checkered bathroom, looking in the mirror
waiting for the
dilated eyes to cease for it to get out of me get out of me
After freaking out and telling everyone about what it says in the Koran
about drugs
God has put a veil before your eyes and when you lift it you see
Demons in people. The men who followed me and watched me eat my ice
cream cone
until I felt sick and threw it in the street, and passed it later on
all melted and spread out
like a white hand. The way I had to go hide in my bed like a coffin,
the man with one
eye who sat next to me stole Julie’s seat at the cafe and the pain
it took to look into the
other eye a sailor’s blue and red and straight to my stomach when
he said - Be thankful
for your warm bed - and I am guilty I think I don’t know and I’m
sorry.
I’ll wait one more hour to take my water and cigarettes and go
sit by the monument in
the square and watch the birds. To close my eyes and live the flash
memories of eyes I
met while traveling, like houses disappearing while you pass them on
the train.
Stupid Waitress
by Matthew Mongelia
This red-head is not
fiery red
she is
red
nuisance
red-mosquitos
red-ants
She is
red-
surprise-stomach-virus
red-stubbed-toe
red (migraine) head (ache)
She is
red burnt tongue
red
diarrhea
Well,
maybe this
red head is
fiery.
Sun-in-your-eyes
fiery
Scar-from-the-stove
fiery.
If she is
fire
she must be
smothered
quickly
Someone I was close to ignores me now
by Patrick Frank
On main street, where there is an empty church
On main street, where I have parked my old van
I greet Steve the unshaven mechanic
Homeless hang out on the sidewalk in front of the soup kitchen
I can forget the pain of work/probation again
In the café I read the I Ching and write this poem
I know beauty will come back, touch me with her eyes
When I die
by Ignatius T. Mabasa
When I die
I don’t want a funeral
With tall speeches
Falling like yellow leaves
Punctuated by
Rehearsed sniffs and coughs
I don’t want faked tears
Borrowed lines and lies
So shiny and straight like railway lines.
When I die
Just bury me
Dispatch me.
Put me in the ground.
Translated from the Shona by the author himself
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Concrete and Plastic
by Ignatius T. Mabasa
I miss the open air
In the open fields.
I miss the stretching space
That was usurped,
By high-rise glass buildings.
I see ashen street kids
Playing and fighting
For an inflated used condom.
“Strong, dependable and
Can hold up to 3 liters of water”.
I look around me
For the coloured butterfly
And the soaring eagle,
But the city has created
Urban modern birds.
The candy eating pigeon
The hamburger-munching crow.
I miss the human-being
In all this concrete and plastic
Where robots and computers
Professors and talk-show hosts
Telemarketers and experts
Tell me what is best for me
Even if they don't know me.
Translated from the Shona by the author himself
Along Samora Machel
by Ignatius T. Mabasa
Along Samora Machel Avenue,
I knocked a woman down
But I didn’t stop.
I saw her toss and turn
In my rear-view mirror
Before lying still, twisted
Next to her loaf of bread,
But I couldn’t stop.
Fearing the crowd would get me,
I drove on in the confusion
To flee from the chaos
To try and get home
If home was still there.
Along Samora Machel Avenue,
I knocked a woman down
But couldn’t stop.
Bullets were flying
People were dying.
Another mass uprising?
Along Samora Machel Avenue
I knocked a woman down
But I didn’t stop.
A heavy truck reduced her to pulp
And this was no fiction.
I bled with her – profusely
But I just couldn’t stop!
Translated from the Shona by the author himself
café de (fool) rêves
by Emily Gerstell
we are having an affair
it's very à la French
we will not cry when you leave me
which you will
I sit here still
my coffee cooling in the wake of your departure
two strangers
two cups
a fleeting connection
the soiled dish proclaims I was not always alone
*Timeliness Pipeline Livelihood Timeframe*
—para Time, Toga y El Beast
by Paul Siegell
Overslept, running
down a sidewalk in
a comic strip—not the
quickest nincompoop
in the thingamabob,
but know it's almost
impossible to go thru
life without a-stumblin'.
Y there's an emo band
named "LOST DOG"
on every other telephone
pole in town. When their
new CD comes out I owe
it to them to buy it, not
burn it—But, prolly won't.
Y there's all these maniacal
street performers in the park:
scenesters, scissor-running
misfits, pig fangs, ninjas of
lighting, epileptic starfish,
a riot of pirates with an elf
at the helm—It's like they all
took sobriety advice from Alice,
then met up for to minimize the
condominium-mods of the city.
How anarchic chic. Wanted to
stop y dip the salsa, but someone
set all the cacti on fire; the chimeric
chimichanga-lovers went bananas.
Like a Tex-Mex text message, none
of it made any sense—But, I just made it.
Señor Noir, can we have class outside today?
"No," he replied, "y you'll understand
why when you're
younger." Then he gave us a pop quiz on the President's
effects on the country when he makes decisions with his id.
—Oh man, ev'rything's weird. Let's act normal and
get noticed.
Untitled
by D. Hooper
We sat on folding chairs
in the backyard,
dulling rays of sunshine idleness beating down on our backs,
and we sit there thinking
nothing
nothing
nothing
the world passing before our eyes
like film from a projector
And maybe all we really need is a martyr
or another enemy because right now
We know too much.
Able to sit and breathe slowly, like
wolves choosing their prey at the edge of
the Wood.
Days and Nights and failing streets of
screaming madness had lined our path
to this place, and now we were
triumph
and boredom.
Please, give us a wall to push against,
Or a back to be stabbed in.
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