Last hug

Jacques Coetzee

How is it possible that this world,

so full of joy and sorrow,

of rogues and insufferable hypocrites,

doesn’t contain enough air today

to fill those wrecked lungs of yours;

doesn’t contain the right food

to travel down your throat and stay down?

Rooms would fill with laughter when you entered them:

generous as summer, stern as hell too

when the rage was on you.

One time (it must have been

coming home from a hard day’s work

busking at the Cape Town Waterfront) you scolded

that I shouldn’t write poems about poets,

but only about my own experience,

and that I should acquire more of that

immediately.

Friend, I’m sorry it’s taken

that last hug to prepare me

for writing this. Even though

there’s no way I can get enough air

into these lines for you,

at least I can finally say I got the message;

and that even for a joke as cruel as this

there is rhythm and music. Even for this goodbye

surely, surely there has to be a poem

that’s strong enough.

(published in This Recurrence of Light, Ecca, 2022)

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 4 August 2022 as one of the Ecca poets

Lig bly lig in ’n donker tyd

Alviné Appollis-du Plessis

Die ketel fluit. Ek haal twee bekers uit: een vir my en een vir jou.

Ons kuier op die patio

en loer so af en toe

na die bonsaiboompie

langs die malvaplant

wat jaloers na my dahlias

op die stoepie kyk.

Ek wil so graag vir jou ’n gedig skryf,

sommer net uit dankbaarheid:

dankie, Lig, dat jy lig is en nie donker is

soos ek.

(published in This Recurrence of Light, Ecca, 2022)

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 4 August 2022 as one of the Ecca poets

Ode to the Mango

Lara Kirsten

Oh Mango!

i just ate the best specimen of you today

i can die a thrilled and exhilarated human being!

Oh Mango – delightful sister in the Anacardiceae family –

you are soil sun forest and nectar gloriously fused

there is no other fruit like you

you bring out proud and unashamed selfishness in me

i want to eat you all alone

you are made to be eaten in your exotic entirety

juicy and messy

even when i slice off your skin

i dig my teeth inside each peel

to run the very last sweetness of

your exquisiteness over my tongue

i can only be so patient and civilised

soon i throw the knife clatteringly into the basin

i grab hold of you with my two adoring hands

Oh Mango!

i sink my teeth deep

thrusting close closer and closest to your heart

i suck and pull at your clinging fibres

there is a leafiness

an earthiness

a primordial forestiness

that nestles in your flesh

i try to capsule your inimitable aroma with my tongue

i want to shackle you to my throat

you are sweet sun incarnate

oh drip down my throat forever and ever

let my uvula turn into the branch of a tree from

where you can hang your volcanic flavour and

lava over the voraciousness of my ravishing

Oh Mango!

you have gravitas

you have presence

you have boldness

you have splendiferous explosiveness

when i peel you it is like pulling the trigger from a grenade

but the explosion is not bloody and damaging

it is healing binding connecting

my every tissue into a wholeness of harmony

i do not dismay when the fibres cling between my teeth

i do not grab for the floss

i let the last signs of mango

turn my teeth into flying buttresses and

my tongue into singing spires

Oh Mango!

you make my mouth rise

like a grand cathedral from

your radiant revelations

Ode to the Mango

Oh Mango!

i just ate the best specimen of you today

i can die a thrilled and exhilarated human being!

Oh Mango – delightful sister in the Anacardiceae family –

you are soil sun forest and nectar gloriously fused

there is no other fruit like you

you bring out proud and unashamed selfishness in me

i want to eat you all alone

you are made to be eaten in your exotic entirety

juicy and messy

even when i slice off your skin

i dig my teeth inside each peel

to run the very last sweetness of

your exquisiteness over my tongue

i can only be so patient and civilised

soon i throw the knife clatteringly into the basin

i grab hold of you with my two adoring hands

Oh Mango!

i sink my teeth deep

thrusting close closer and closest to your heart

i suck and pull at your clinging fibres

there is a leafiness

an earthiness

a primordial forestiness

that nestles in your flesh

i try to capsule your inimitable aroma with my tongue

i want to shackle you to my throat

you are sweet sun incarnate

oh drip down my throat forever and ever

let my uvula turn into the branch of a tree from

where you can hang your volcanic flavour and

lava over the voraciousness of my ravishing

Oh Mango!

you have gravitas

you have presence

you have boldness

you have splendiferous explosiveness

when i peel you it is like pulling the trigger from a grenade

but the explosion is not bloody and damaging

it is healing binding connecting

my every tissue into a wholeness of harmony

i do not dismay when the fibres cling between my teeth

i do not grab for the floss

i let the last signs of mango

turn my teeth into flying buttresses and

my tongue into singing spires

Oh Mango!

you make my mouth rise

like a grand cathedral from

your radiant revelations

(published in This Recurrence of Light, Ecca, 2022)

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 4 August 2022 as one of the Ecca poets