Migrant poetry by Naomi Nkealah

An interrogation by a 16-year-old

Do people wear jeans in Cameroon?

Yes, they wear jeans of the highest quality.

But do they have shops and malls in Cameroon?

Yes, they have big markets and shopping centres.

But do they have cars to get to the shops?

Yes, they drive Toyotas and Mercedes Benzes.

But can they afford petrol to put in their cars?

Yes, you can’t drive a car with water, can you?

Oh, so people know how to drive there?

 Yes, they have driving schools just like here.

Do they have metro police like we do?

Yes, they have traffic officers like you do.

Do the police take bribes like ours?

Yes, some are just as corrupt as yours.

But do people go to prison there?

Yes, criminals go to prison everywhere.

But do they give them pap and meat like they gave Nkateko?

Yes, they give them pap and meat and fish and chicken.

You see, that’s why people won’t stop crime!

Oh yes, crime will never stop! 

Naomi Nkealah is a senior lecturer in the Department of Languages at the University of Limpopo (Turfloop Campus). She holds a PhD in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and has published widely on various subjects, including gender, xenophobia, and human rights. Her articles have appeared in South African journals such as the English Academy Review and Tydskrif vir Letterkunde (Journal of Literature). She has also contributed chapters to various books published internationally. Besides her academic work, she writes short stories and poems which have been published in literary journals such as New Contrast, Carapace and A Hudson View, as well as in various anthologies.

Migrant Poetry of Campbell Macfarlane

Fallen Angels

A river of animals moving through African dust
With drought left behind and migration a must

A seasonal migration for survival come what may

With Darwinian culling frequent along the way

Human survival based on choice not genetics

A subtly different process with different kinetics

We journey through time with diminishing diversions,

Without any leaders and with human imperfections

A widening gap between ourselves and reality

Our chosen recipe for globalised insanity

A widening gap between a culture of greed

And those who cannot satisfy basic human need

Our journey a rat race of corrupt acquisition
With egos and agendas a mockery of evolution

Of chief psychopaths who cannibalize family along the way

And screw human lemmings for profit and play

We should protect what is ours from establishment clones,

cavemen and bullies and sycophantic drones

No time to be nice, no patience with fools

We must dump personal baggage and try to craft rules…

To leave shallow waters, leave the selfish behind

Absorb a tapestry of cultures on our journey through time

Share if not one language then global peace as a goal

Navigate homeward and resurrect our soul

Campbell Macfarlane was born in Scotland and have lived in South Africa since 1975. A retired doctor of biochemistry, he has an interest in stem cells, evolution, writing poetry and plays and making movies.

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.