Tsitsi Jaji Poems

Here lie the remains of Cecil John Rhodes, Colossus.
Land-locked, rock-clad in dolomite, as he willed it.
Cairo would not have him; he would not have the Cape.

Here Rhodes lies, dead as diamonds.
No one digs him up. No one salutes, Bayete.
The view is wasted on him.
...

These have been the days
I wished to break like a stick
across my own knees, to splinter the
joy that took me. Because it was not my own.

Listen, listen!

One time, there was rain that came after we prayed. We had learned thirst's fervour swilling mouthfuls of sand. We danced a rain dance, and then the rainfall came. It fell back to the earth.
Another time, I fingered a heart from my own herd, a cattle globe whose valves leaked into my palm. In the lines of criss-crossed blood I read a mantra that drowned out the nethermothers' tantrums.

To those who believe a flood is a spiritual thing,
preceded by tonguèd winds: Be ashamed.
It comes creeping up on you like
a snare . . . lightly, lightly
Loosening the soil's death rattle. And then you are washed away

In the rain's rush.

Listen. Listen.
...

let me magnify your shelter
let me examine those unrepeatable
swirls of horn-rimmed
indifference
let me observe your
effortless snobbery
your half-hearted welcome
let me learn from your neck's arc to dance a departing adagio
slothful, delicate, a balance of grace and ice.
let me go on and on about your scorn
eloquent . . . loquacious . . . circumlocuting
so that the hasty are bored, so that they
turn the page halfway (how much longer)
and only the brazen and selfish understand
your intellection. let me consider
what sort of home I would need
to be always the hidden hostess
the unseen entertainer, the echoing doorbell.
the half-muffled interior sounds never metamorphosizing to footsteps.
let them rage at my imperturbable distance
let me take my own sweet time and chew
all day long.
with attitude

!
...

Under the bridge there are
stones growing
smooth with the
slippage of water
and the
smear campaign of silt.
The moon floats
closer
and closer,
trawling below the bridge.

Is it time
or a limpid ripple
of maize-silk swimming?
And while we look away

she glides under
to the other side.

Light.
...

Walk through the edges,
circumvent centre
(circle the square, so to speak)

Having parted ways with the crossroad,
take each path offered, and unite into
a thousand thousand fragments

Stutter in the tongues of men and angels.
Spit out the truth:
How the Honorific Title ‘Mad Woman' Was Won.

Destitute, discover the ancestral home, and
sit down to fast sumptuously at the
high table.

Comforted, stare into the mirror
that divided all these years,
the mirror that melts in the mouth.

Now, speak clearly.
...

For Rachel Ellis Neyra, poet
Now, I see that
my wilderness
is our field,
and I call
my neighbor
to plough it
with me. Our
hoes dig deep.

Our harvest spills
over into something
an awful lot
like hope.
...

Introit: In the Physics Lab
Fire. We flinch, then close in on the light.
A Bunsen burner transmogrifies air
into flickering tongues of indigo air.
We watch in curious commotion
as copper sulphate flares into
a bright blaze of turquoise.

Fire. We come to learn how compressed air
powers the engine, how pressure does work.
We come to prove our candlelit diligence.
Our memories are sharpened by flame.
What we know cannot be countered -
thermodynamics, conserved energy, inertia, force.

Open the gates and examine us.
Let us silence those city bureaucrats who say
we cannot learn by firelight.
Tomorrow we do our part, wielding our nibbled pens
for the principle of uncertainty.
Our heads are clear, our minds made up.

Antiphon: In Sambiza Forest
Fire, we smelled it before we heard it,
a slosh of petrol on dusty soil.
We had studied the conversion of
chemical energy into light. Too slow
to run, we were clutched in flame, then fired upon.
We wasted their bullets, already charred.

Ashen, we watched our mad sister leap
from the lorry and limp into the dead
of night. Her sober sisters lived in a forest,
cooking, and praying, and praying again.
Spirit-sighted we saw their return, nursing the
horror of these months on their breasts, fired,

fired with an impossible love.
Look, it is us, we twenty-nine boys
who went up in flames, in Yobe.
Remember us, remember us. Water
our memory with your tears.
Water. Water. O give us water.
...