On Saturday afternoon after the washing has been hung and our clothes damp-stained with its constant carrying back and forth we sit on grandmother’s stoep the sun warming my scalp as my cousin cuts neat rows through my hair with the tail of the comb she lays a path for the hair food and gossips about the neighbourhood
Like a lot of Chatsworth’s service industry workers I ate many of my meals at Imperial Curry House. The takeaway was popular with us because it suited our odd working hours. It opened at noon each day of the week and only closed at two in the morning.
On Saturday afternoon after the washing has been hung and our clothes damp-stained with its constant carrying back and forth we sit on grandmother’s stoep the sun warming my scalp as my cousin cuts neat rows through my hair with the tail of the comb she lays a path for the hair food and gossips about the neighbourhood
Flowers are always welcome at funerals Yellow dahlias In the midst of black mourners White lilies To adorn the grave Fists full of earth Connect to wooden boxes Encasing swollen bodies Fat and ripe with decay
At the backyard of my home where the teardrops of sad angels have rusted the wires, I will make myself a car from old wires and drive it around new brighton. then I will lose the last teardrop that ever turned me into a sad cloud with grey cheeks, making a sunflower pregnant so that it can weep seeds for my pigeons.
The tall building in Johannesburg, Marshalltown smolders. A potent smell of burned things: paint, rubber, plastic, fabric, human flesh, lingers on Albert Street. Now the onlookers know, how the burp of death smells like.
We are proud to bring you the annual prestigious NATIONAL POETRY PRIZE and to announce the winners through OFF THE WALL, on Monday, the 3rd April, at 7.30pm.
The always competing two horizons delay themselves in a pause before night’s fall, and the sun’s lazy eye that had reached the edge eyes the moon’s beguiling eye at this decline between evening and night, heralding the zen of things.
Aba teetered between sleep and waking. Each time she drifted off, a bark or a croak or the rumble of a car rushing past roused her, so that again, she counted her breath – to not only slow it down, but also to distract herself from her thoughts, which whirled and collided like balls in a lottery machine.
In die begin was die appel ʼn aanbod. Die Mattby metro is in ʼn mall, Iso Omena, i.e. The Big Apple. By Mattby trek die M1-metrokar weg en ek voel vir my selfoon om te kyk hoe ver...
Their famous guest published an essay in which he described what happened that day. He called it Luncheon at Pretoria. It was jocular; wry. He built up the narrative with his customary care, beginning with a description of the drive from Jo’burg (thus we called it, he wrote) to Pretoria.
the track has changed. the melancholy of its spine, the rattle of its dust, the verge of succulents and scented bush