For Michael Jackson

For Michael Jackson

When God touches you there
you soar
in amplified magnificence
or fall into recoil

into a ball of epic self-pity
empty of blessing
shucked of benediction
but the only drug, ugly, beatific.

———————

This was written 10 days ago after reading Peter Conrad’s overview of Jackson’s life, “Who stole the soul of the boy from Indiana”,  at The Guardian, cribbing “epic self-pity” from the article.

Fiona Zerbst, Four Poems

FIONA ZERBST’s fourth volume of poetry, Oleander, is due soon from Modjaji Books, and will be launched alongside volumes from Sindiwe Magona,  Joan Metelerkamp and Helen Moffett. Here are four poems from Oleander:

Moths

At night, they bloom to light, like buds that burst
for air. As if they had no wings, they startle
into glass. That muffled knock
again, again, again –
they are like stars that break against the darkness,
break like vases,
brown containers,
tiny insect vessels of a great hope; longing
for the light; even dying for it.

Hart Crane, 1899-1932

Prodigal, shucking off the first-class hell
of being you in bar and cheap hotel,
you leapt. The S.S. Orizaba churned
on anyway; propellers flensed and burned
the waters battering towards New York.
A fellow passenger, who saw you leap
and thrash, watched only for your body’s cork
to float up. As she shudders into sleep,

the juddering vessel, droning, is the bell
that sounds your verses, amplifies your voice,
American Rimbaud. Given the choice,
would you have gulped the broken world as well
in sober hopelessness? Your sailor’s voice
must first be lost in fatal tides to tell.

Politics

India’s alarming Pakistan.
America is rumbling, after oil
and vengeance. And I’m fumbling with one
completely dud, half-burnt mosquito coil.

It’s winter. Still, those insects will attack.
Lights go out and houses in the street
begin to flicker. Candles offer heat
as much as arguments do, and looking back

it seems as if we’ve argued far too much.
The world’s an angry red; the smudgy blue
of dawn-lit ash is arty, but the hue
is cold-cut bloodless; flesh you dare not touch.

We stutter with the paper’s platitudes.
A drive into the country’s dull and sad.
Not even death can end the bloody feuds
that families have and so I’m very glad

we don’t have kids, my grandfather’s dead
and nobody but you and I can suffer pain.
Last night, in a clumsy leap from bed,
I smeared a big mosquito as a stain,

against a wall. I wiped the dry remains
away this morning. Commas of our blood
were brown, unreadable. And later, floods
came swollen, breaking on a white-flat plain:

a natural disaster. Sheep and cows
went under, surging to a muddy end.
You held my hand. A multitude of ‘nows’
came crowding back. Of course I won’t pretend

you haven’t stung me, gutted me, deprived
my life of air. I’m grateful all the same.
All’s fair in love, war, etc. Your game
remains apolitical, hopelessly contrived

yet pure. The Middle East is poised for war.
Relief’s been sent for victims of the flood.
Food and candles. Fresh-donated blood.
You reach me, wordless, as I cross the floor.

In praise of loss

Lose
Until the loss
Feels right.

Lose at cards.
Fold.
Refuse to play.

Don’t respond
To provocations,
Words.

Don’t invest.
Be certain
That it doesn’t matter.

Hold yourself
Aloof; lose
The men you know

To other women.
Fold.
Refuse to play.

It’s no shame
To spare your neck.
Let it in,

The knowledge
Of this loss
That is dying, living.

© Fiona Zerbst, 2009
© Modjaji Books, 2009

(Thank you to Fiona Zerbst and Modjaji Books for granting permission to have the poems appear at Groundwork. See below for details of the launch and a sample from Moffett’s book, Strange Fruit.)

Helen Moffett, Four Poems

THE FOLLOWING poems are from Helen Moffett’s forthcoming debut volume of poetry, Strange Fruit, published by Modjaji Books (manifesto). Strange Fruit will be launched, together with three other volumes of poetry, at the Cape Town Book Fair on Sunday, 14 June at 5.30 to 6.30 pm at the DALRO space in the Exhibition Hall. Thank you to Helen Moffett and to Colleen Higgs of Modjaji Books for granting permission to publish the poems. Copyright remains with the author and the publisher.

Gathering waterblommetjies

A wintergreen afternoon in the Overberg:
the bust of a woman on a shelf of dam-water
her frizzed halo electrified by four o’ clock sun –
one hand holds a plastic bag aloft
the other threshes, garnering from
the raft of slippery porpoise blooms
upon which she rests her stolid breasts.

Mined

Loving me must be like visiting the Balkans.
I’m told it’s lovely there; seen the pictures
of pastoral valleys, dappled woods
secluded inlets of blue dispersing islands;
all dotted with bridges, quaint villages
and monasteries of antique masonry
speaking eloquently of culture and craft.
But a flak jacket and tin hat are advised;
over some innocent hill you’ll find,
without warning, a site where violation
has soaked into the earth, something
has been razed, horror still haunts,
with shrapnel and tank-traps in the lulling grass.

And the history – the history: no matter
how hard you try, you’ll never quite grasp
why one sniping shot triggers a world war.

Amphibian

The penis is an amphibious creature;
mostly it lives on dry land,
but given the chance, it slips
joyously back into a moister
environment, where it grows
gills of glee, glides in this
primordial clime, this balmy
tropical sea, swimming
in ambergris and musk,
slithering through humid clasp
and pulse, leaping
higher, diving deeper:
in its element.

Envy

This is my lot: to see pregnant women,
mothers with babies everywhere,
families, parents with orbiting children,
the parade never seems to stop.
So envy and I are very old friends:
I have the upper hand – mostly –
although the odd shaft runs me through.

But the clammy agony subsides in the end,
I don’t go careening down the street,
screaming, hissing, stabbing at eyes with nails:
instead, I attend baby showers and christenings
armed with thoughtful gifts and tasteful hats;
I congratulate, dispense adorable booties,
make casseroles and allowances too.

This is my dubious gift, the compensatory coin
the bad fairy left behind when cursing me:
the capacity to contain without spilling
the viridian bile. Others are quite safe from it,
especially you, poor forked thing, a man –
wombless, childless: you have nothing I want.

© Helen Moffett, 2009
© Modjaji Books, 2009

Wolfram Alpha and unladen swallows

Wolfram Alpha today struggled to compute an age-old puzzle regarding unladen African swallows and airspeed velocities. Clip. But was able to provide the details for an unladen European swallow. Clop. Are these birds strangers to our shores?

Scott Coykendall, Five Poems

Cull

The wounded hen crowds her face into the corner between
the plastic tub — bursting with grain pellets — and the naked stud.
Her bare back is slick with gore and the smear
of yesterday’s ointment. She beats the air with one white
wing to fend off my glove, its fist full of medicine. Winter
has finally slouched out of the North and they, none of them,
will scratch bare earth for months.
Sweet Old Bob, the big white cock, bullies
a clutch of hens into the opposite corner. Another
clutch flies up to the chorale perches
and turn their yellow eyes on us. Blood crusts
the hard horns of their mouths.

Maybe they need protein. Maybe they are bored with this cell.
For days, they have marked this hen — who my daughter named
Pretty Girl last summer — for some difference: opening a wound,
then pecking, probing at the bright blood, until she staggers
with infection and blood loss. In this fashion, they adore her.
She is celebrity, solstice, celebration. Even the stinking ointment
cannot secure her peace.

She’s easy to catch. I cradle her to my chest, careful to keep the pulpy
side away from my jacket, and carry her out into the sharp air. The sun
is already setting. Cannibalism cannot start here.

In the garden where she and her sisters ravaged the summer pea
crop, where I picked prickly handfuls of metallic Japanese Beetles
to feed them through the wire, I suck cold air through my teeth and
wrench her neck. This is for
her.

——————

The Migration

After the office meeting, men of the nearby subdivision loiter
in the conference room discussing potato guns in casual pants
and v-necks. Plastic eagles, rubber snakes: all the best ways
to drive geese from their lakeshore. They are fed up with shit
on their wide lawns. They are fed up with racket.
Their water quality is plummeting.

I am new in the office. New to offices. But I want to
interrupt—flap my arms, describe Squaw Creek sanctuary
where I saw clouds of geese, 500,000 strong, over 7,000 acres
of marsh. A million ducks thrown in too. Squabbles
breaking out among the young. Lifelong mates finding old
friends. And over all, a vast galaxy of feather and bone —

hollow as whistles. They’ve come from the Arctic Circle,
where young were born and fledged in a matter of weeks.
Now that the rivers are straight and the other marshes
are drained, the subdivisions look awfully good.
Some are tumored with lead shot. Some are sick or injured
or old. Their friends delay.

Along the edges of the marsh, gawkers like me gather.
Shutters blink open and closed. People watch. Bald Eagles
watch. Coyotes and hawks and owls watch as geese pinch
themselves onto the water. The geese are through complaining
about shit on the land, racket, fouled water. They have
someplace to be.

(first appeared in Midwest Quarterly, Fall 2006)
———————

Penny

Years later, I remember the anti-sound from across
the kitchen. Music, dish clatter, and the bellow
of the vacuum cleaner sucked into my daughter’s dark
face. It was silence enough to turn my head.

After that, the three long steps and my left hand sweeping
her ankles. Three savage blows to the diaper from my right: Love!
Love! Live! Just like that, The End lay wet and winking
on the floor and my little girl, wailing her fear of me, fled
to her anxious mother and would not look at me.

Alone, I pushed my knees into the floor. My stomach shivered
and slithered into my mouth. My fists, palsied, still ached
to keep the life in her.

(first appeared in Centripetal, n.d.)
—————-

February in New Hampshire

is snow
coiled round bare birches, drifted
in a maple crotch, sugaring white pines.
Snow on the radio, after the avalanche
drowns a skier. Experts list the shapes
of snow: keys, plates, ball bearings…
Imagine this lethal clutter, the junk-drawer
crashing down the mountain.

The woods exhale
plumes of snow. White floods the meadow.
Snow softens granite. Snow, burnt black
where it meets the road. Mountains
of snow on the town common. Piled
into dragons, rolled into men. Snow
is coming. Wave your arms, kick. Snow
is still coming down. These angels
disappear.

——————

Trumpet Lessons

Because my daughter’s new trumpet is bright as winter sunrise,
she forgives its flatulence. Sitting on the edge of her bed, toes
pointed to the floor, glowering at the funhouse reflection of her face
on the bell, she blows the same near note
One Two Three times.
And again.
And again.

This is not an anecdote where the parents cram socks into their ears
and pray for time to speed up. Nor do they imagine genius.
In this story, the father sneaks a pile of jazz CDs into the child’s dark
room hoping Miles
Davis or Chet Baker will turn on the lights,
then he creeps downstairs to his half-finished
poem, the note he’s been trying
to hit.

© Scott Coykendall, 2009

(Thank you to Scott Coykendall for granting permission for Groundwork to publish the poems. Copyright remains with Scott Coykendall)

Today you’re Linton Kwesi Johnson, tomorrow you’re Clinton who?

No chance, but thus the said man said, explaining his constant touring as making hay while the sun shines.

It’s 7 years old, but here’s a great inter-overview with him by Maya Jaggi at The Gaurdian (May 2002). Check it.

A gracious friend offered me a ticket to his show on Friday, May Day; I had initially toyed with going, but it’s open air (I think), and it’s Cape Town in May. The weather might play a role. Besides, if it’s Denis Bovell’s band, you want that shit indoors, so that the bass reverberates off walls into your gut.

Anyhoo, I had to decline the ticket as I had then already made alternative plans.

I’ve been listening to LKJ quite a bit lately, especially ‘Reggae fi Radni’ (about Walter Rodney, for the uninitiated) and ‘Reggae fi Dada’ (about his dad’s passing). The latter remains one of my favourites. Some of the lines could so easily be about Cape Town:

Mi nevvah have no time when mi reach
fi see no sunny beach when mi reach.
Jus people a-live in shack
people livin’ back-to-back
‘mongst cackroach and rat
‘mongst dirt an disease
subject to terrorist attack
political intrigue
constant grief
and no sign of relief.

Housing targets – Kelwyn Sole

Housing targets

Somewhere in our past
we believed in the future

that a better world
would discover foundation
under our feet, and we
would forever be singing,
in its kitchen.

Bricks pile up in a field.
Whether they will be enough
no one knows. How
they fit together
is anybody’s guess.

Men with darkening skins
scribbled on by weather
wait for their instructions.

From time to time
limousines miraculously appear:
there is always a somebody
in a suit willing to smile
and shake their hands

who lays the first stone.

Then the camera lights
and racing engines
turn around, shrink back
from where they came.

Those left behind
stare at their own hands
afterwards, puzzled
at precisely what
has been transacted, why
they are still being offered
bonds

squint
between gnarled fingers
pace out the hopeful distances:
- there will be a flower bowl.
- my bed is going here.

As for now the doorknobs
have no doors.

Their windows peer out
at no sky.

– Kelwyn Sole, Love that is Night (Gecko Poetry, 1998)

…

Wolfram/Alpha is coming…

Always Delicious: The Kitchen

The Kitchen

(Karen Dudley)

111 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock

021-462 2201

JUST BACK from a quick lunch at The Kitchen, caterer Karen Dudley’s new kitchen-cum-lunch-bar. Well known for her catering business, Wonderful Food, she has finally opened a place of business from which she now conducts the catering, but also sells food to the hungry passerby.

Lunch items consist of sandwiches at ZAR25.00 (made to order), a take-away salad at ZAR25.00, and a lunch plate which costs between ZAR40.00 and ZAR45.00. Items change based on what is available and what’s cooking on that particular day. Today’s sandwiches were bacon & avocado, roast chicken, melanzane & feta, honey-mustard sausage, among others. A range of fixings, from pickle to harissa, is included.

Ken Barris, Six Poems

An artist

The skin on her knuckles, in the webbed
groin between finger and finger, is cracked
and dry. These are hands that have painted
endless images, now blurred into one; grime
of every colour stains her fingertips. Her nails,
pigment half-moons, show permanent damage.

There is copper in her laughter, unburnished,
streaked with age, but little humour. It does leak
out sometimes without warning, dribbles away
like the smoke of her strong fags. Now she studies
a painting: a winter ground of trees proudly
naked in their bark, and many dark birds.

——————

Goat Himself

Goat stares and chews,
knowing his eyes
are the yellow of Satan.
He’s read it many times -

bored with the truth
he rams his reflection
in a farmhouse window,
shattering the glass.

In falling shards
Goat multiplies,
all jagged edge
and goblin eyes.