The books always take my chair and send me onto the floor. I lie on my side, sometimes on my back, with an open book completely a sky over my eyes. I’m all ears to the returning birds of my neigbhour’s tree… the raindrops cry out like donkies, they keep me awake the whole night eating carrots. Tomorrow I will leave this room jump into the grass, exercise with grasshoppers a how-high exercise? Who knows maybe I can touch the moon and bring you back a sack of oranges from my mother who lives behind the moon.

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A knock on the door brings me back to the table to peel potatoes, make chips, cut the bread and quiet my stomach. It is dark, by mistake I cut my finger, it burns sending sparks of fire around the house. At the corner I see the red chair of my grandmother, inside the glass of water I see her false teeth swimming - two little pink fishes with many bones, swords for sea horses. I’m no longer hungry. The cats are crying like babies outside, since the morning two tortoises have been making love, they cry like me on the breasts of the woman I love.

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The voice of my grandmother in the distance getting closer and closer, grandma to you I lied I said I’m sick I’m not going to be able to attend church, to have her in your house...  Your cry my cry our sex this moaning had made the reverend end the service early. We have irritated the ears of god, listen now somebody is knocking at the door. I can see it’s my mother with the bible inside her purse, knocking, and through her fist I can hear another voice that’s my grandmother.

I step on the carpet naked, the dust rises up, my sweat glides down, the grass grows tall same as my fears. I send my grandmother back and forth to the front door and the kitchen door until you escape through the kitchen door… We made that old woman drop her weight from 80 to 60 kg in seconds.

Grandmother I watched you shrink while your garden blossomed.  Now these wreaths on top of your coffin turn our eyes to bees, we dart from wreath to wreath trying to catch our breaths as we read the writing of each flower. 

2. the handkerchief was red (unpublished)

I picked up an old horse-shoe on Somerset street, it was when they were digging up the graves to fill up the street with new tar, now at night horses are running inside me, a wounded man at the corner is currycombing his horse with his fingers, maybe for the last time on earth, because there’s blood on the street.

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I have hidden bones inside myself, lot of bones, light in weight, bones I carry everywhere I go with me… down the road when I go to Boast village to visit the remains of sisi Wawa in the dust… bones I carry to Dubula to say hi bro B how are you doing, passing Teya street lots of dogs are fighting, passing by they stop with their fighting and come after me shouting, we want our bones. One crazy dog grabs me by the leg to taste my blood.

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The handkerchief was red, hard red, how I’m going to use it when a handkerchief feels like a board. Someone whispers to my ears, it is made of blood, it was soaked inside the blood.

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The angel comes from heaven gossiping to the stars all the way about my secrets of how I lost my hair to reflect the face of god. This talk of open wounds on Christ’s hands will pass too with my saddest bones, the ones that keep on sending my hands to bandage my sprained ankles.