Here Is A Gertrude Sneeze Number Eleven? ? Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

Here Is A Gertrude Sneeze Number Eleven? ?



Now that you have gone
To discuss the bride price
Of Alexine, everything concerning
Her life from now on will
Be on your shoulders.
Her sickness, death,
Jail sentences, fines and
Pregnancies are all yours,
You hear me, last born of Isaac?
My aunt said as always from
Her shrine of the Black Madonna,
Where her authority oozes
Copiously. T the day my in-laws
Came to ask for the girth, for
This is how you speak with the
Kingdom of the people of Ngwane
About marrying their daughter.
You ask for the girth of the waist,
of her whom, you have come to request to keep
The fires on the hearth of your
Home warm. My father keeps it to himself, knowing
His sister had not told my aunt,
For fear of the scene she would
Make in front of people who 'do
Not know us.' Like a queen of wizardry
She accused him of loosening the
Knot around the family that Isaac
Had left tighter than one around
A victim of a suicide by hanging.
'For you have trodden on the snake
That guides our safety, ' my mother
Mocked after she had finished.

'You, ' said my aunt to her, 'When I
Am spited, I spit fire and very
Soon you will know what kind of
In-laws we are for you speak to me
As if I am a rotten fig that dropped
On your head from that fig tree, ' she
Said pointing at the fig tree near our
House. I thought the fig tree would
Shrivel when I looked at her finger
And remember Jesus and the fig tree
That would not bear any figs.'I was
Not born first so that I can arrive
At family gatherings last. I hold
An invisible scepter that can stir
Things around day in and day out for
I guided you all out of my mother's
Womb into this world. No marriage begins
And ends without me, unless you want it
To end before it begins. If you want this
To be a marriage, let us right now pretend
What you did, did not happen, for I swear with
The tears of my mother at birth when birthing
Me, for they were the first tears of her sweat
That she remembers clearest. If you want to
Create your own rules go and live in
The land where people do as they wish.
For the spirits that made this crest that I carry
Are shocked as I stand here naked, for
What you have done has removed the only
Sign of blessing I bring to all our occasions.

As she speaks, I see her tears glistening
Down her face attesting to her crest-fallen
Ego, and for once my father is calmer than
Cucumber as he listens to this tale that he
Has heard repeatedly. How she has repeated
The importance of her birth to the world has
Thoroughly bored my father, Ffor he does not
Even move to show that her tears are powerful,
When they pour in torrents and land on her
Bony chest.

She who reigns from the shrine of disorder's strength,
Is petering out. I can see cracks in her long and stable
Ruling of the house that has borne the disorder she
Wields with quiet poise. It is now splitting into
Fiefs that make me wonder what we will do now that
This story with no end is coming to an end, especially
For me who is trying to leave and go as far from here
As I can. They say a story that has no end
Is no story for every beginning foretells and end.

That my father would be the one that would start
The rocks rolling down the mountain of this kingdom
Renders me mute. They say surprise chokes its victim
for it leaves the fiercest fighters and their armies
In disarray. The house of Isaac has finally decided
That nakedness does not hurt a clan when they have to
Undress the queen bee. For someone has to remove the
Knickers from the bee so that it can sting and die. The
Risk is in work whose results we are already enjoying
Because nobody needs to answer the questions that have
The same preamble, 'if these imbeciles will call me to
Our home...., ' Isaac no longer threatens to turn in his
Grave for he is as dead as a nail. His silence down there
Creates a new truth that leaves tentions between family
Members reminiscing in an air that is free of the billows
Of anger that drown every voice and sink every heart.
Fighters only do so when there is an audience. My father
And his actions have rendered the air quiet so that anyone
Who dances in front of our family in outbursts expecting
Explosions hears the 'woosh, ' as the balloon flattens
because of the affairs aforementioned. Now I know me,
Alexine will marry in peace and say goodbye to chaos unending.
The girth has been set at a herd of ten, to be paid slowly.
So slowly I go to the place of new beginnings yet still hearing
the sound of the wind from whence I came. I choose not to listen,
but pop in and be as happy as the one who can no longer hear, even
if it was only yesterday that family woes were the order of the day.

Saturday, February 25, 2017
Topic(s) of this poem: fighting,life,marriage,family
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