excess love
(for Pelagia & Tendekai)
You are miles, song and love
all at the same time
driving through dark rain, snow
and the unseen of night
I feel the turning of your wheels
As you gently reach towards me -
the new arrival, wet on the heels,
yearning for a familiar embrace.
We hold memories quick and fast,
clasp at every minute to do as much
building the small hours to a monument
and with each embrace we become home
to ourselves. Children of the house
of stone, dreamers from the dusty streets
of Budiriro - the walls of safety
that sheltered us in our youth;
lost children who have found each other
in the wild - loving, remembering, urging
ourselves to hold tight, to let the small hours compact
the humongous love sitting on our throats
into something malleable, short, sweet,
lasting...
The point of choking is redirection;
an oasis of renewal
as we hang silent goodbyes
beneath our rebellious tongues.
Eyes hold, wet with lingering hope.
of days uncertain
There will be days uncertain
when the wind blows from
holes in the earth you can't see
Days that feel like the ancestral spirits are in turmoil
when clouds carry the face
of your late grandmother, you are torn,
not knowing whether you too have ascended.
The sun doesn’t always shine muzukuru*
it gathers its warmth in shallow ponds
and freezes sometimes, so harvest.
Harvest it when the sun comes
for days like this when Yakutsk[1+] visits
and sits uninvited in your lounge
takes a tooth pick to the last vestige of warmth
and swallows.
There will be days too certain
let them wear you like a crown
Days filled with yellow butterflies,
things transient and bright
Dance. Dance without care,
dance until the chickens come home
to dance with you, until every bone in you aches
of good vibe and cheer, dance.
Days like this may be rare
frame them, in heart-sized molecules
patch them together with meticulous care
stitch out every breathing hole
keep the silos tight
for there will be days...
Translation:
muzukuru – Grandchild
for forgetting to breathe while alive
My sister is refusing to be buried
The undertaker has been trying for hours
to move the coffin from her house
The coffin swells at every attempt.
I warned her all the time, she would
die of bitterness one day, try, I said,
try to breathe once in a while
let the anger go, try not to keep score.
Her miserable self-wraps the mourners
in a trance and they sing and dance
like this is an offering to appease
her lifetime of sadness. Kurara hope rugare*
they sing, all night, beating the drum
as if to beat the misery out of her dead body.
I used to tell her to breathe;
She has only remembered now
She sucks in all the mourners’ breaths
that make the coffin swell
every time the undertaker
reaches for the door.
*Kurara hope rugare: To sleep/sleeping is a luxury
the precipice
My friend has packed her bounty,
gorgeous mind into her pretty luggage
to take journeys into herself, in her room
behind her sun crinkled curtains.
Like the pathway that leads to her homestead
She has forgotten me, forgotten other things
like how to comb her hair, her sister tells me
She says she wants to heal. To breathe.
I am here, patiently waiting, watching
the pathway to her homestead, hoping
for the day she will appear, praying
she will remember me and the many other things
she is forcing herself to forget,
like how to breathe to stay alive.
[1] Yakutsk is a city in Russia with the coldest winter temperatures for any major city on earth.
Batsirai Chigama is a performer, poet, literary activist, and social commentator. City of Asylum described her work as “surprising, shocking, and skillfully deliberate work,” and “a breath-taking embodiment of grief.” Chigama’s debut collection, Gather The Children won Outstanding First Creative Published Book at the National Arts Merit Awards in 2019. In the same year she was an honorary fellow at the International Writing Programme (IWP) at Iowa University. Her work with young people, has taken her as far as Denmark and the USA, performing and facilitating creative writing and spoken word workshops in schools.