Poem
Poem
November 6, 2021
There must be some things we miss
from the old life in cold brick hives,
but we no longer remember.
Our heads are perfumed with garden maps,
wattle season, glory of compound eyes
and intoxication of the swarm,
the sun-swollen gynoecium
that centres every flowering plant.
This is the ecstasy of all shapeshifters,
the pollen and sap of becoming,
our late-budding adaptation
to finally belong.
Poem
April 11, 2020
Paul Kelly
Riddle Poem Three from the Kelly-Hoard
I, myself, am generally hopeless at riddles; my brain freezes at brainteasers. For instance, I couldn’t get this rhyming riddle someone sent me recently and had to do a quick internet search so I could get on with my day:
I’m the part of the bird that’s not in the sky.
I can swim in the ocean and yet remain dry.
Like the above couplet, today’s poem rhymes. To my mind the answer is easy. (But then, I wrote it.) I’m more interested in making a good poem than a fiendish riddle. I just want the pieces to fit. That’s all art is, in the end, I suppose – getting the pieces to fit.
Poem
April 18, 2020
Ellen van Neerven
are we one hundred years ago?
take me to that place where sky and ocean meet — I’ve been missing that place and tonight I will have that dream again — of our Shark with its fins sliced off, bleeding out — my bro died today, he was healthy — my bro survived the war but he did not survive this
Poem
April 4, 2020
Omar Sakr
Diary of a Non-Essential Worker
Did you know violins can shake the earth? Such sweet vessels, tiny planetary throats. I was sent an orchestra. They made music, a sorrow, a soaring, that shivered the dirt. I followed the notes to a barbarism.
Poem
March 28, 2020
Maxine Beneba Clarke
generation zoom
in the third week of the pandemic
schools started closing
workers were sent home
and they started to call the youngsters:
generation zoom
named, of course, for that chat-app
all of them seemed to use
logging in for facetime
completing maths lessons online, dancing
tiktok feeds on loop, clicking in
to instanews, and everyone was asking:
what on earth will become
of whatsapp’s children?
Poem
March 21, 2020
Ellen van Neerven
social isolation is an act of love
we scroll the news
trying to figure out what’s to come
looking at measures placed on other countries
school closures
city lockdowns
individual freedoms we give up
where will we be a day from now
a week, a month
six months from now?
Poem
March 14, 2020
Paul Kelly
Riddle Poem Two from the Kelly-Hoard
Some lines from Omar Sakr’s poem last Saturday have the flavour of a riddle poem:
Fellow flotsam, what makes a person a
person? The animals are asking.
Friends, what makes a citizen a
citizen? The people are barking.
I keep going back to this poem, circling it. Perhaps many poems have something of the riddle about them. Intimations that are hidden at first but emerge after the reader does some work.
I only have one answer in mind for this month’s poem but perhaps there are more. Good luck.
Poem
March 7, 2020
Omar Sakr
[Y]our people [Y]our problems
I have never had a country
willing to claim me as its own.
Sit with me as I sit with that.
Hold my hand. Our knees can touch
across the loneliness, which, at least
and at last, wants nothing of us.
Poem
February 29, 2020
Maxine Beneba Clarke
something sure
sit down here now baby,
stop that fidgeting
listen big,
and understand
mama’s gotta school you
’bout something sure
’fore you grow into a man
Poem
February 22, 2020
Ellen van Neerven
every small protest counts
| ACCOMPANY | your children |
| ADMINISTER | biryani to those braving the cold and rain |
| ADVOCATE | for freedom “Aazadi!” the children cry |
| APPLY | music to the streets |
| ASSUME | those who are here know the words a song is not a song unless it’s sung by many |
Poem
February 15, 2020
Paul Kelly
Riddle Poem One from the Kelly-Hoard
Riddles and riddle poems have been around a long, long time in human history. One of the most famous riddles, referred to in Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles in the 5th century BCE, is posed by the Sphinx to Oedipus as he’s on his way to Thebes.
Poem
February 8, 2020
The once-white lady dipped her hands
into a faceless mass at the border
she said, I’m the one to give you a face
as if she wasn’t the one who stole it
in the first place, someone must humanise
the mass, the migrant caravan, the babies
as if people can ever be less than people,
where did that idea come from I wonder
but never mind that for now, let us return
Poem
February 1, 2020
the night before school starts,
our swimmer-tans fading,
we cheat, with gozleme,
from the woolworths fridge:
fry it golden, and crispy
on the heavy skillet
with slices of lemon,
to acid through guilt
