Once

Mike Alfred

Rounding the bend, I see,

as does the station clock

and the grand Casa Labia,

Neptune’s herd pounding

towards Surfer’s Beach.

Their snow-white manes

are flashing ablaze, they’re

coursing, leaping the turquoise

field, roaring as they queue

to slow upon the land; just

once in a mighty lifetime,

once, in all eternity.

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 5 April 2022

Fragments: Weekend Mythos

Tariro Ndoro

pick a colour blue the colour of ocean of water of vast expanses and perhaps escape Rusape Dam

rushing like blur before the girl’s eyes to the place where time stops still home

pick a colour white of white boats, white yachts and pillowy sails of the people who swim there the

glistening of fishing rod twine where the girl wants to swim but she is told the river holds secrets the

dam is a crucible of mermaids menfish

and time stands still

screams backwards backwards until

max the taxi driver brings her back to grandmother’s greeting “welcome child of my child, flesh of

my flesh” and everything is like it was before

In the shadow of Tsanzaguru and the lion head Tikwiri

pick a smell wet stones of women hitching their skirts to wade in the river of PerfectionTM soap,

greased onto shirts by women speaking freely a dialect so rare it will be ridiculed out of the girl’s

mouth in later years

pick a smell, then, acrid wet cattle rushing to kick their feet in the dip brown black mottled hides and

curved horns an excursion soon to be outgrown, along with climbing rocks

pick a smell acrid dry of the library her grandfather left behind shelves that still carry Hemingway &

Emecheta but weevils have eaten the pages the plots have holes in them now bags of fertilizer keep

the pages company

pick a sound a clang metal on metal iron sharpens iron cow bells on beasts coming home as the

orange sun sets

pick a sound laughter two sisters playing skip rope in the dust till their feet are brown and ashy on

their tongues – a borrowed song that never made sense:

Christopher Columbus was a great man/ he went to America in a saucepan /

he went to untie, untie, untie/ handy over/

two little sausages in a saucepan / one was rotten... /

and another went to die!

into supper by firelight orange flames and cricket song wood smoke has burnished the walls

remember the girl to those nights where the milky galaxy of bright stars shone sometimes blue

sometimes bright and sometimes shooting across the sky (make a wish! make a wish!) then to gossip

and prayers and an hour of radio one announcements of births and deaths.

pick a sight big silver old moon in the inky black night hanging like low fruit, ripe for picking how

does the story go? old Rozvi kings tried to steal it from the heavens a legend as ancient as the rocks

In the shadow of Tsanzaguru and Mount Tikwiri

pick a smell wet earth wet grass early morning dew cow dung and clean smoke

pick a colour pink frock Sunday best follows her grandmother her grandmother in Anglican blue in

Anglican white in swift gait a surprise baptism: glacial water on the girl’s forehead your name is now

Theresa Maria Patricia the girl forgets her new moniker

a particle, dust, gathers on the baptismal certificate now folded now carefully placed in the cardboard

box labeled Envelopes of Tudor wherein lies the last image of a long dead grandfather last seen alive

in the summer of seventy-six

cause of death:

unknown

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow Zoom launch of The Only Magic We Know: Selected Modjaji Poems 2004-2020 on 31 March 2022

voice

Marike Beyers

it slips down your throat

making home inside your chest

you cannot cough it up

it rushes from you

when you reach for it

you can only wait

you get up one day

and find this rock on it

your breath seeps out

you cannot move it

or step around it

you do not know the weight

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow Zoom launch of The Only Magic We Know: Selected Modjaji Poems 2004-2020 on 31 March 2022