Hillbrow 2, Prose Poems of Amitabh Mitra

At Hillbrow, a Zimbabwean girl curls in darkness before a growing night. She is one of three million Zimbabweans who have to flee to South Africa. Only her eyes glow in perpetual hunger, her neurones numbed by daily beatings from her Nigerian master. She is a tree now, other girls from Kwekwe seem to see her in borderless sunsets beckoning them to come. In the eyes of another sun she longs to die but not before her earnings slay in dreamless sleep the drought of lives succumbing slowly. Her mind, body and tonight her smile is encrusted on this debt. There is dearth in dryness, she says in impeccable English, Can I be your master for tonight, Sir, I will show you what even the cranial saw wouldn’t show after you have sawed my skull in a bid to understand the cause of my death. I live through many a death, each one seem to ridicule the other in its severity.  Each death lives through many others like many birds perched at an infinite corner of a shadeless sky. And as I idly die I laugh at the vulnerability of your godless seasons and even at a person like you who have thoughtlessly caught up on writing about me. You wouldn’t believe, I have an honors degree in English. I tore it to bits after humans tore my humanitarian time. She left me finally in neon bright on other strata, swinging her hips towards a darkness dressed as a car purring in the far corner.

Strangely, I think of my colleagues in Medicine who long to believe that that they have finally reached time’s expected boundary where nothing really matters beyond that.


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Shocking reality of SA human trafficking

Masisi, North Kivu, 2007

masisi

north kivu

a place defying beauty

green is even the color of sky

blatant in living strangely when death wounds coexist

they just don’t smell right

z incisions and popping out bullets

in a faint line where hues

lives strangulated permanently

lets only hope

says le general

laurent nkunda

he smiles, he holds firmly his cane

dying is not always so far

away.

Read my article The Congo Connection

Migrant Poetry of Raphael d’Abdon

  

migrant blues

 crossing a land grooved
by the presence of dauntless signs

sighs of solitude hovering
over the aching night

there are answers hidden
in these moonlit memories

at the centre of the margins
a quiet view
of places left
and paths imagined


sunnyside nightwalk

a rusty lamp throws a weary towel over the street corner
i sit on a bench and share some words with alain,
my brother from burundi
he’s a street vendor
he’s got two public phones
sells candies
matches
chips
and even single rizlas
in case of emergency

he’s trying to make a living and raise his two kids
between the cops’ raids
and the xenoidiotic threats of some local afrophobiacs
(king shaka would be ashamed of these modern age fighters
and don quixote would pity them)

apart from this
alain’s doing fine
his babies are sleeping now
they’re dreaming of tomorrow’s crèche
where they’ll be playing all day
with the policemen’s kids

i salute alain as
three skinny cats jump out from a deserted building
look at me with disdainful indifference
it must be my long beard and my tattered shirt
or maybe
they’ve more urgent things to think about
like finding a way to catch that bloody bird

they’ve skipped too many meals this week
ribs don’t lie
and the night cutting wind reminisce
of how fragile they are

i kick dreams away as a
washed out pack of nik naks swirls down the sidewalk
and arrogantly lands
over my rugged takkies
littering is fascism
and i just can’t stand ignorance
niknaks
and dirt

drunk screams from the flats across the road
from under a leafless tree the glittering shadow of a knife
blinking in the shrieking winter fog

“business as usual” smiles the flashy nedbank billboard
over the razor-wired fence

the umpteenth sickening sound of police sirens
rips the moistened sky in two
it stiffens the mallow along my squeaking spine
while needles
sting the midpoint
of my frozen anus

it reminds me that it’s time to go home
and i agree (even if i don’t have one).
i walk around the corner
find a seat at sipho’s tavern
pull up my overcoat
pull down my beret
and order another beer

it’s the penultimate one
for today



Dr Raphael d’Abdon is an Italian scholar, writer, editor and translator. His essays, articles, poems and short stories have been published in volumes and journals. In 2008 he moved to Pretoria, where he lives with his wife and his daughter. He is a vegetarian and his hero is Prince.