kagablog

“Before I could read, I loved books and liked to collect piles of them …”

Finuala DowlingBorn in Cape Town in 1962, Finuala Dowling was the seventh of eight children of radio broadcasters Eve van der Byl and Paddy Dowling. She has lectured at Unisa and worked as a freelance educational materials developer, writer and lecturer. Her short stories have been broadcast on radio and have appeared in several anthologies, winning runner-up prizes in the Cosmopolitan and Commonwealth Broadcasting Association competitions. She won the Ingrid Jonker Prize for her first volume of poetry, I Flying, and was co-winner of the Sanlam Award for poetry in 2003 for her collection entitled Doo-wah Girl of the Universe. In 2005 her first novel, What Poets Need, was published by Penguin. Finuala lives in Kalk Bay with her family.

What Poets Need
Author: Finuala Dowling
Publisher: The Penguin Group (SA) (Pty) Ltd
ISBN: 014302468X
Publishing Date: 2005
Format: Softcover
Price: R80 on kalahari.net (Buy this book now!)

Michelle McGrane: Finuala … it’s a beautiful, unusual name. Where does it come from?

Finuala Dowling: My name is Irish. It means “white shoulder” and has something to do with a myth involving a swan. Though my father wasn’t born in Ireland, he identified strongly with the spirit of his ancestral home.

Kalk Bay seems the perfect location for a writer to live - the sea view, pavement cafés, enchanting curiosity shops, and winding streets. How long have you lived in Kalk Bay?

I’ve called Kalk Bay home for 34 years, even though for eight of those I was actually living in Pretoria or Riebeeck-Kasteel. I’m not sure I could write anywhere else in the world.

Do you enjoy walking on the beach? Do you find poems come to you while you’re walking along the sand?

I walk or swim every day and I find that something about these simple, rhythmic exercises tends to release the mind and enable it to make unexpected, unforced connections. When I was going through a particularly productive period, whole poems would come to me as I walked - image, rhyme, lineation, everything - I’d say them over and over in my head, trying to keep track of the editing changes I was making in the unreliable ink of thin air, anxious to get home and write them down, but reluctant to interrupt the process. Yet I never go to the beach thinking, “Now a poem will come.”

What were you like as a child and what was it like growing up in a large family?

My mother says of me, “She never spoke to us.” I was the seventh child of two very strong, clever, articulate personalities, so there always seemed to be plenty of noise, conversation, playing, theatrics, excitement and laughter going on. In the midst of all this hubbub, I would frequently withdraw. At first into the garden, where I played with an imaginary friend and her (also imaginary) family. Later, I’d spend hours in my room drawing or making things or writing satirical newsletters. In our teenage years and early twenties, we siblings shared friends and had almost a kind of salon society with people just dropping in for tea on Sundays and staying for drinks and watered-down soup to which my mother added every leftover in the fridge. I sometimes think my writing comes from a feeling of having had something to say, but no opportunity to say it - partly because everyone else was talking so much, but partly because of a degree of habitual introversion.

Were you always clear about what you wanted? What did you believe about your future?

Before I could read, I loved books and liked to collect piles of them around me, sometimes pretending to read or teach from them. When I could read, I read everything. All the books my mother brought home to review, all my brother’s university set works, library books, the back of the cereal box, newspapers, graffiti, joke books, books from fetes, old books gathering dust. We also had a strong culture of the spoken word at home: my mother reading aloud to us every night in her beautiful, Guildhall-trained voice; listening to comedy records or poets’ voices; evenings where friends and family told or acted out hilarious anecdotes. But there were other possibilities, apart from writing. I remember in Standard 3 our teacher going around the group and asking every girl what she’d like to be. There were, of course, some who wanted to be air hostesses and hairdressers, but I said I wanted to be an archaeologist. I think I changed my mind because I was worried that digging in Egypt would be very hot. Then I had two very influential art teachers who made me think I might take up painting as a career. I still sometimes miss that feeling that comes over you when you have a brush or 2B pencil in hand. In matric, I was studying a special literature course in addition to English - we did everything from Beowulf onwards. When the literature teacher asked me what I’d go on to study, I said I was hoping to get into Michaelis Art school. She said, “That will be a great loss to literature.” Those words, plus the fact that we couldn’t have afforded expensive art materials, set me on my course. I thought I’d train to be a writer by studying great books … ag shame.

Who have been the most influential people in your life?

People who’ve helped me to see who I am and what I can do. Family, teachers and lecturers, friends, publishers. Apart from my family, the people who’ve had the greatest impact on me were (and continue to be) colleagues at Unisa. I worked with a group of women there under Margaret Orr, and they never doubted for a moment that I’d be a published author one day; they helped me to firm up that vision of myself. Years later I sent my first poems to another Unisa colleague, Leon de Kock, who edits the journal scrutiny2. Not only did he publish 11 poems of mine (”Send me everything you’ve written,” he said, after reading the three or four I’d humbly submitted), but he showed my poems to Gus Ferguson. Gus invited me to read at a few events, helped me to understand that I was a poet, and of course, he published I Flying.

At what age did you start writing poetry?

I’d love to say I was a child prodigy, but I only began in my very late thirties. I’d always imagined myself being a novelist.

Which poets have inspired and influenced you?

When I was young I was largely dependent on the “syllabus” for the poetry I encountered, though my mother was working as a drama teacher at the time and introduced me to some much more fun stuff. I remember one poem in particular that began “A year ago last Thursday, I was strolling in the zoo/ When I met a man who thought he knew the lot/ He was laying down the law about the habits of baboons/ And the number of quills a porcupine has got”, and I thought, “So poems can be natural, funny, quirky!” But generally, though I read many different kinds of novels beyond the prescribed Lord of the Flies, choosing freely from the library, the poetry I read was limited by the list set out by the Department of Education, and that list was in turn limited by the available anthologies. Luckily in South Africa we had Robin Malan and his anthology Inscapes. But the real problem was that I seldom came across a whole volume of poems by just one poet - apart, of course, from Longfellow, Wordsworth and Tennyson in frighteningly large, dusty tomes at home. At university they were obsessed with teaching us the Metaphysical poets and the Romantics. We never got to hold in our hands and cherish that wonderful thing: the slim volume of verse by a living poet. Although I think syllabus poetry is often great poetry, poetry that one comes back to, it did not speak directly to me as an eighteen-year-old. I responded to Ogden Nash, William Carlos Williams, Stevie Smith, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, WH Auden, ee cummings, Thomas Hardy. Today I think Billy Collins is marvellous, also Sharon Olds, Paula Meehan and Eavan Boland, Douglas Dunn, Roger McGough, Wendy Cope, Denise Levertov, Maya Angelou, Grace Nichols, Antjie Krog. In the struggle days, my favourite poet was Mzwakhe Mbuli. I want to teach courses which involve students buying real poetry books, not anthologies.

You were awarded the Ingrid Jonker prize for your first volume of poetry, I Flying. Where did you get the inspiration for the collection’s title?

The title comes from the poem of the same name. In this poem a group of us are walking down to Kommetjie beach on a bitterly cold, blustery and stormy winter’s evening, with my nephew Gabriel in the pram. The wind is almost gale force, and I’m feeling sick with an old sadness that the weather is doing nothing to improve. The little girls are happy, though - they’re pushing Gabriel’s pram really fast, so fast that he stretches out his arms and cries “I flying.”

Are there people you feel comfortable sharing your work with when it’s in draft form, people you can use as sounding boards?

Probably not quite in the way you mean. These days we exist in a workshop culture - everything is a collaboration. I don’t feel happy with that at all. I’m enough of a critic of my own work. But that doesn’t mean I don’t need people. Sometimes when I’m writing or speaking in a normal way - just saying something aloud or conveying a thought or anecdote by email - my interlocutor or correspondent will say, “That’s a poem!” More often I show people my poems once they’ve been published. But there are two notable exceptions. The one is public readings - I find these very useful places to test drafts. Not that I’d welcome members of the audience coming up and making editing suggestions, but just being able to listen to my own poem as I read it, and to see its effect, that helps me judge. Some poems that I thought were marvellous have sunk and been relegated in this way. Others have completely come into their own because of a lively audience response. There is one person in particular I sometimes send drafts to, more as an act of intimacy than as a request for feedback.

Is a poem an almost immediate creation for you, or do you put poems away in a drawer and return to rework them months later?

Poems are quite immediate with me; I find it hard to return to the exact mood of the first writing later, so I tend to work straight through on a poem until it’s complete, rather than shelving it.

When you’re putting together a collection, how do you decide which poems go into the book and which to exclude? Do you find it difficult to put personal feelings about some poems to one side?

By answering this question I must reveal a shocking fact about myself: very few - fewer than ten or fifteen poems - have been left out of any collection of mine. In fact, I Flying consists of every single poem I’d written up till that point barring two which I just knew were bad. I find the ordering more difficult - which poems to place side by side and which ones need to give each other a wide berth. There are poems that I secretly like but which seldom come up in discussions as readers’ favourites. I don’t think that matters.

Tell me a little about Fay Weldon’s Fiction.

This is the book that came out of my doctorate. I chose Fay Weldon because I found her novels (from Down Among the Women to The Life and Loves of a She-Devil) funny, experimental and punchily feminist. The problem was that Weldon’s fiction started to change almost the moment I started to write about her. I found her later novels flip rather than witty, and trendy rather than current. I loved her self-conscious style (she addresses the reader directly) and produced a novel that bristled with Weldonian tricks, which I now find quite irritating. I’m pleased to say it was rejected and I hope it never sees the light of day. Still, the whole experience of writing a thesis taught me discipline, and the publisher who rejected my novel attempt wrote to say I should please send her anything else I might write. That was Alison Lowry, and ten years later I sent her What Poets Need.

And your comedy, Bungee Writing Finals, won the Audience Vote at the PANSA Reading of New Writing Festival in 2002 and went on to a full production. How do other genres of writing affect your poetry? Is it difficult to keep your hand in so many different forms, or do they feed off one another?

I’m not sure that I have it in me to be a dramatist - I’m too much of an introvert and that’s not good for stagework. Bungee Writing Finals was based on my experiences as a creative writing teacher, so even though it’s a play, it’s still very textual. It’s a theme I’d like to come back to some time. I’d also like the play to get a proper run one day. Dramatic elements work very well in poems, as do prose moments. I think I like the interplay of different genres. What Poets Need was a conscious attempt to break those artificial boundaries, to make a novel-addicted public take another look at poetry.

Do you type your work straight on to your computer or do you use pen and paper until you’re happy with your draft? Do you have different processes for getting down poetry and prose?

I work straight onto the computer except for desperate moments in the middle of the night or on holiday. I treat prose as a job - I report for duty and work to deadline and word limit. Once I’m in that disciplined environment, all kinds of wonderful creative ideas can and do flow, but I have actually forced myself to be there in the first place. Poetry is different. I come here to write a poem because the poem itself, or the thought that is about to become a poem, has completely seduced me.

You’re a mother too! How do you juggle the demands of motherhood and a busy writing career? Is there a certain time of the day or night when you work your best … do you find yourself creeping to your desk in the small hours of morning when the house is asleep?

I can’t work at night - I rarely if ever have written after 9.30 at night. I get up at 5 or 5.30 a m to write. My daughter does struggle sometimes with this unavailability, though I make it clear that she may interrupt me at any time. It’s not something I’ve resolved, or that I feel on top of, this motherhood-writing-teaching thing. But Beaty’s started to write very passionate poems herself, so I’m pleased.

Penguin South Africa has published your strongly original and skilfully crafted novel, What Poets Need, this year. Are you happy with the reviews and public response you’ve received for the book so far?

I’m delighted. The response has been beyond my wildest hopes. I’ve had all kinds of unsolicited fan mail and phone calls. It’s wonderful, but also frightening.

I love that you managed to integrate poetry so seamlessly into the novel …

I do think of poems as being continuous with life. In my family, a quote from a poem or a pause to listen to a poem will happen in the middle of ordinary discourse.

You begin What Poets Need with lines written by Alice Walker from How Poems Are Made/A Discredited View:

I know how poems are made.

There is a place the loss must go.
There is a place the gain must go.
The leftover love.

Do you believe poetry can be therapy for a broken heart, a place for “the leftover love”?

I should say first of all that I don’t advise poetry as a dumping ground for raw emotion. What I think happens, and I think Walker expresses this, is that you sit down to write in a mood of utter despondency and hopelessness. You are beyond coping. You are going under. Then, as you write the poem, something is released inside you - a set of unconscious images or unexpected connections. The poem takes on the loss, but produces a gain - because of an insight, an ironic twist, a sleight of mind, a twist of wry humour, the very proficiency of language itself in the face of the abject spirit. And these gains are actually your own inner resources, only you didn’t know about them before, or you’d discounted them. Well, they’re not quite yours: they belong to the poem.

Margaret Atwood once wrote “… it’s a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography …” Is this one of the reasons you decided to use a male protagonist, John Carson, in What Poets Need, as opposed to a woman who may be identified with you?

Pretty much everyone has identified me with John Carson, so if it was my intention to disguise myself I’ve failed miserably. There were a number of reasons affecting my decision to write as a male. First, I wanted to give myself a feeling of absolute licence, of allowing my character to say/do/eat/think anything he liked without my worrying, “Would a woman say this?” The idea of a younger woman being lovelorn for an older, married man: that was so clichéd to me, it didn’t appeal at all. On another level, something that interested me a lot at the time of writing was my perception that there are men out there who are never represented in books or the media - straight men who cook, feel sensitive, do housework, look after children, respond emotionally/artistically to the world. Adverts, for example, often play on a particularly irritating binary opposition between the “he-man” that’s into sport, sex, tv, etc and the “nerd” who is unappealing to women, klutzy, a loser. I wanted to depict a man who would show up the artificiality of traditional gender distinctions and stereotypes. Finally, it was just such an empowering thing to write as a man, such a liberation for me. John is NOT me in all kinds of ways. He’s not nervous about walking on the mountain alone; he expresses thoughts that I keep hidden; takes time out for coffee breaks; he’s more outgoing; less driven … I liked being him. He got to me. Right at the end of the last set of revisions for Penguin, when I’d been inside his head for 72 hours non-stop, I opened my wardrobe one morning and thought, “What the hell are all these dresses doing here?”

You raise the issue of eating disorders through John Carson’s niece, Sal, a gorgeous, intelligent nine-year-old who becomes unhappy with her weight and refuses to eat. Are you concerned with the prevalence of eating disorders and society’s preoccupation with a largely unrealistic ideal in terms of female shape and attractiveness?

The normalisation of anorexia/ bulimia concerns me deeply. By “normalisation” I mean that our society accepts and silently, implicitly, encourages the idea of perpetually hungry women. The media depict underweight women, those without breasts, hips, tummies or thighs, as beauties deserving of praise and reward. The alternative is always represented as morbid obesity. But somewhere in the middle, under erasure for the most part, is the now abnormal-normal, slightly rounded, woman. Every now and then the media allow us to reflect on the special, radiant beauty of the normal size 12-14 woman - Nigella Lawson, Marilyn Monroe, Kate Winslett. But then it comes back with its mouth spitting full of vitriol about “piling on the pounds”. Renee Zellweger is described as “piling on the pounds” in order to play the role of Bridget Jones, who is to my mind a slender to normal-shaped woman. To eat normally, to have a normal weight is seen as a moral failing. Interestingly, round, plump or normal-sized women have gone underground, have become the secretly desired, the quiet lust of men pushed towards boniness rather than bonniness. Statistics show that while men marry thin women (leaves more for them to eat? Looks like a more pliable option?) their lovers/mistresses tend to be plumper.

In the novel, John communicates with Theresa, the married woman he loves, by email. Do you correspond with people mainly via email? Has writing letters become a thing of the past and do you miss it?

I confess I don’t miss letters very much, though I still love getting them. I love the immediacy of email, the secrecy, the possibilities for record-keeping. Emails for me double up as diary entries. I also hate, hate, hate the telephone, so I’m trying to train everybody to communicate with me this way.

In your experience, do you think people generally have preconceived ideas about poets, about their emotional make-up, the sort of lives they lead?

The only really funny idea I find people entertain about me personally is the notion that I go around seeing absolutely everything as an opportunity for poetry. “I suppose you’ll write about this,” they say, or “I’m going to find myself in a poem.” I would say that there is still some residual mystique attached to the label “poet”. I notice that Gus Ferguson always refers to himself as “a pharmacist”, which is true of course, but also an oblique, ironic reference to that mystique thing, a side-stepping of it.

What has writing a novel taught you?

That when you are writing most personally about yourself, you are actually writing most universally.

Tell me about a few of your favourite books and why they are important to you.

I have a special affinity for the confiding tone of first-person narration, the “I” of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter. That kind of intimacy you feel when the narrator trusts you so deeply: it is like friendship. My favourite books are also all in some way concerned with the creative process; they are metafiction: Possession by AS Byatt, Pale Fire by Nabakov, Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood, Colm Tóibín’s The Master, Unless by Carol Shields, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I’m not a big fan of elaborate plots: I love interiority. I love books about reading too: Dai Sijie’s Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress; Bernard Schlink’s The Reader, Tobias Wolff’s Old School. Like all sane people, I regularly reread the entire works of Jane Austen.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? What does feminism mean to you?

Yes, though I reject the negative stereotype associated with the word. A feminist is someone who believes that women should have equal rights - this is the dictionary definition, and by that definition, most South Africans are feminists.

Do you think age is a factor in becoming more confident, more accepting of oneself? As you get older, have you found yourself mellowing to a certain extent? Do you ever find yourself worrying about ageing?

As I’ve aged, I’ve definitely improved. I was way too sharp, almost acerbic, in my wit as a young woman, and intolerant of non-intellectuals. Now I feel much fonder of the world in general, and actually delight in the kind of people I used to scorn. I have less ambition now, yet I get more done and some quite astonishingly wonderful opportunities have come my way. I worry about the far side of ageing, the way it seems to me that we have been given so many more years to live (if 80 is the average life span of a woman, many of us must be living to 100), but without guarantee of physical comfort, financial security or mental agility.

Finuala, what are you passionate about? What moves you, what inspires you, what brings you joy?

I’m not a very passionate person on the outside - I think I appear quite reserved. I’m nervous about hugging and kissing: I always seem to bash noses when pressed to someone’s cheek. But I do feel strongly on the inside. I love to laugh, I love sudden shared insights among friends or moments of delicious absurdity. I love letters or visits from friends, winter walks in the Karoo or just on the mountain; in summer swimming in big bashing waves. Calm, pearly evenings when the whole family gathers for champagne in the garden. Family shows and theatricals - spontaneous or rehearsed, especially if they involve our children. Sharing a wonderful poem or novel I’ve just discovered. The way it feels when a poem arrives. Planning parties or skinnering with my sisters. Finding unusual beautiful romantic clothing in velvet or chiffon. Being alone but not lonely. An early night with a hot-water bottle.

this interview first appeared on litnet

“Definitive” was written in January this year to celebrate the birth of Nicola Deane and Aryan Kaganof’s baby girl, Abraxas Caelan Kaganof.

Definitive

You are born on a Thursday
in a city of sirens and smoke
in the season of lost tongues:
your strange downy crown
is shrouded in mystery,
your tiny pink fists
are a revelation.

You, little mammal,
curious fingers unfurling,
crumple up your face,
an unpunctuated yowl
strangling the dark,
as your newly born mother,
freshly stitched and love heavy,
stumbles over your crib
to feed you.

You, suckling bud,
with your milky warm breath
navigating the flesh
of a blue veined breast,
at five days old
refuse to take no
for an answer.

for more poetry by michelle mcgrane check out her blog peony moon

kagablog contributor michelle mcgrane has just started her own blog peony moon. check it out here

“we have started the crossing
who knows? It may end badly …”
- jim morrison

saturday, 3 july 1971. le marais, paris.

it is after eight in the morning. i wake to find your side of the bed cold. curled up naked, i blink groggily and stretch, the twisted sheet wrapped around my legs. a terracotta pillow retains the faint imprint of your head. where are you? through the closed louvres i hear the rumbling traffic along rue beautreillis and the shrill, excited voices of chattering children.

our palace of exile is stuffy and warm, shrouded with dope and stale sandalwood. your khaki slacks, a musty sweater, lie discarded at the foot of the bed beside a whisky bottle and an open notebook, the pages tattooed with your large, sprawling scrawl. a rudimentary french-english dictionary. a dog-eared translation of ‘une saison en enfer’. a scattering of clippings and photographs: our memories of another life: laurel canyon and love street, venice beach and sunset strip.

i reach for my white djellaba. a robe of dawn dreams and sacred stars, you said; the one you bought me as a gift in algiers. the dripping tap draws me barefoot through the bedroom. past an overflowing ashtray, another empty bottle. past your favourite pair of boots, ready to walk along the banks of the seine or across the road to ‘le beautreillis’ with its blue and white striped awning.

i call your name and open the door. summer sunshine slants through the small high window illuminating a mosaic of dust motes. the smell of urine from the unflushed toilet. the smell of vomit: sharp, acidic, partially digested pineapple chunks. you are soaking in the bathtub, your tilted neck nestled in the porcelain curve. the taste of iron as rust flakes on the roof of my mouth. are you trying to scare me? even in sleep, I have not seen you this peaceful.

blood blossoms beneath your right nostril. the pale pink water is lukewarm, your hooded reptilian eyes half-open. breath stilled, a slight smile becalms your face like fading faith. my arms and legs shake. i try to lift you, cradle you, naked and wet, to my breast. instead, water splashes the dirty linoleum. again, i cannot hold the weight of you. a renegade cockroach crawls through the dead zone.

somewhere upstairs, strains of piaf: a far-off mourning for no one and everyone. absence. fear. guilt. a kaleidoscope heart eroded, exploded. did I truly think we could grow old together? did i think you would live forever? our strange course is run. no time for guardian angels and highway indians, for pagan enchantments and shamanic visions.

crouching down on the slippery floor, i trace the blue veins in the palm of your hand. too many things i still need to say … i kiss you. again and again. the slow ache possesses me. alone you have journeyed to the shadowy cave. maggots have not yet devoured you though the dark gods have delivered your final poem. the tap drips.

a is for

abandon, abase, accountability, accusation, activism, affirmative action, africa, african, afrikaans, aid, aikona, alexandra, alienation, allegation, ammunition, anarchy, anc, animosity, anxiety, apartheid, apparatchik, arrest, arrogance, arson, assault, asylum;

b is for

babel, baby, back door, backhander, bafana, balaclava, banned, beer, beetroot, belonging, bigotry, biko, black economic empowerment, blanket, bliksem, blockade, bloody, border, boundary, bra, braai, bread, bribe, broken, brother, bury, butcher;

c is for

cabal, cacophony, car guard, censorship, children, church, citizen, cleveland, clothing, cold, coloured, combustive, community, compassion, complacency, conflict, congolese, conscience, constitution, consumerism, cordon, corporation, corpse, corruption, cricket, crowbar, crowd-control, culture;

d is for

dagga, danger, darkness, death, decay, decree, deficit, degradation, demarcation, democracy, denial, deportation, desperation, destruction, detour, diarrhoea, diepsloot, difference, dignity, disappear, discontent, discriminate, disgrace, displace, dogmatic, domestic worker, durbanville;

e is for

early grave, earth, eastern cape, ecocide, economy, education, eina, eish, ek sê, electricity, elder, elite, emergency, emigration, enclave, entitlement, epidemic, ethnicity, eurocentrism, everyday, eviction, evil, exile, expatriate, expectation, exploitation, expulsion, extortion;

f is for

faceless, family, fast buck, fat cat, father, faultline, fear, fester, fight,

finish and klaar, fire, flashpoint, flesh, flight, foe, folktale, food, foreigner, foul, fraud, freedom, frenzy, frozen, fuck-up, fuel, funeral;

g is for

gag, gang, ganja, gash, gate, gatvol, gaunt, gender, genocide, gesuip, getaway, ghetto, ghost, gibe, girlie, glad hand, globalisation, glutton, gold, gossip, government, gravy train, graze, grievance, guard, gugulethu, guilt, guns;

h is for

half-blood, half-jack, hamba, hammer, hangover, harassment, hardship, hatred, haunted, heartbeat, heritage, hhayibo, hillbrow, history, hiv, homeless, homebru, hopeless, hostel, housing, how’s your mind, howzit, human rights, humiliation, hunger;

i is for

identity, ideology, ignorance, illiteracy, immigrant, impotence, impunity, inadequate, incite, independence, indian, indigent, indololwane, induna, ineffective, inequality, infection, inflation, injury, ifp, insecurity, interest rate, interrogation, intimidation, intolerance, isit;

j is for

ja, jacaranda, jack of all trades, jaded, jammer, jammie, jam session, jargon, jazz, jeer, jesus, jeppestown, jimmied, jirre, jislaaik, jive, job, joint, jol, jolt, jostle, jova, jozi, justification, just now;

k is for

kak, kalanga, kangaroo court, kaposi’s sarcoma, kasie, keep to yourself, kettle, khaki, khaya, khayelitsha, kick, kif, kill, kin, klap, kleintjie, klippies, knobkerrie, knowledge, koran, kraal, kwaai, kwaito, kwazulu, kwela;

l is for

land, langa, lank, language, larney, latrine, lawless, leadership, lecher, lekgotla, lekker, lesbian, liberation, lie, life, lightey, lights out, lingo, litter,

load-shedding, loathing, loneliness, looter, lotto, love, lucky strike, luxury;

m is for

machete, madiba, makeshift, makwerekwere, malawian, mampara, mansion, marginalisation, mbeki, mealie meal, media, memory, migrant, millionaire, mine, minibus, minister, mob, money, mother, mourn, mozambican, mpumalanga, mugabe, murder, mute, mzanzi;

n is for

naai, naked, namedrop, nation, nationalism, nca, nê, necklace, need, negative, neglect, neighbour, network, nepotism, neurosyphilis, newtown, ngo, nigerian, nightmare, nihilist, nooit, north west, now-now, numb, number, nutrition, nyanga;

o is for

objectify, observe, occupant, ocean, ochre, odd job, offender, officiate, oil lamp, old-age pensioner, oom, open-mind, opportunity, opportunism, oppression, oprah, opulence, oral history, orphan, otherness, ou, outcast, outrage, overcrowd, overpaid, ownership;

p is for

panga, passport, pavement, pawn, pedi, perimeter, permit, persecution, petrol, phillipi, plunder, pogrom, policeman, political correctness, politician, position, poverty, pozzy, power, preferential, prejudice, president, prison, privilege, procrastination, progressive, promise, propaganda;

q is for

quake, qualification, quality of life, quarantine, quarrel, quarter-final, queasy, queen’s english, queer, question, queue, quick-fire, quick-fix, quickie,

quiet diplomacy, quit, quota;

r is for

racism, raid, rain, ramaphosaville, rape, raze, reconciliation, reconstruction, red cross, refugee, reiger park, renaissance, repression, resentment, resident, resolution, revolution, righteous, rigor mortis, road rage, robbery, robot, rooinek, riot, rubble, rugby, rumour;

s is for

sanctimonious, sanitation, scapegoat, scorpions, screwdriver, sensationalism, shabeen, shacktown, shadow, shakedown, shame, shangaan, shatter, shoot, short left, sister, silence, siyaphapha, skabenga, skyf, somalian, sotho, soutpiel, spear, squatter, stereotype, stigma, stress, strike, survival;

t is for

target, taxi, tension, territory, terror, theft, third force, threat, tik, tinderbox, tokoloshe, toilet, torture, tourist, toyi-toyi, township, transformation, trauma, trembling, tribe, truth, tshwane, tsonga, tsotsi, tsvangirai, tuberculosis, tutu, tyranny;

u is for
ubiquitous, ubuntu, ugly customer, ululate, umshini wam, uncertainty, underbelly, underclass, underpaid, undertaker, unemployment, uniform, union, unity, universal, unjust, uplift, upmarket, urban guerilla, urbanisation, urinate, utility vehicle;

v is for

vaalie, vaginal swab, van der merwe, vasbyt, veld, velskoen, vehemence, venda, vent, verstaan, vibe, victim, village, violence, virgin, virus, visa, visitor, viva, voetsek, voiceless, volatile, volunteer, vote, vrot, vulnerable, vuvuzela;

w is for

waai, wail, waiver, wake, wander, want, war, water, wealth, weary, weep, wena, westernize, white, widow, windgat, wise guy, witchdoctor, witness, womb, women, word, world cup, worry, wreckage, wrong side;

x is for

x chromosome, xenogenesis, xenogenous, xenophobe, xenophobia, xhosa,

x marks the spot, x-ray;

y is for

yale lock, yank, yap, yardstick, yarmulke, yashmak, yawp, y chromosome, yearn, yebo, yell, yellow-belly, yellow fever, yelp, yes-man, you and yours, your humble servant, yourself, youth, yuppie;

z is for

zairean, zambian, zanu, zap, zapu, zeal, zealot, zebra crossing, zeitgeist, zero hour, zero in on, zigzag, zilch, zimbabwe, zimbabwean, zol, zola, zombie, zone, zonked, zoom, zulu, zuma, zweletemba.

here, where we live,
within our high-walled suburbs
and beige eiderdown beds,

we do not count
the body bags, the mortuary vans,
the displaced lives, the scything tides.

here, where we wake
to good intentions crowded out
with monthly mortgage repayments,

we are puzzled
by the strange metallic taste
we cannot rinse from our mouths.

You are born on a Thursday
in a city of sirens and smoke
in the season of lost tongues:
your strange downy crown
is shrouded in mystery,
your tiny pink fists
are a revelation.

You, little mammal,
curious fingers unfurling,
crumple up your face,
an unpunctuated yowl
strangling the dark,
as your newly born mother,
freshly stitched and love heavy,
stumbles over your crib
to feed you.

You, suckling bud,
with your milky warm breath
navigating the flesh
of a blue veined breast,
at five days old
refuse to take no
for an answer.

it is dusk.
the air is heavy with salt spray and kelp.
the seagull’s tongue is dumb.
dark wings hide the face
of the madonna on the beach.

twin silver starfish lift a long skirt,
reveal pale knees, a cerulean scarf
flutters in the breeze. unseen
mercury eels seethe in her currents.
the moon is a gaping mouth.

she turns away from
the promenade’s ice-cream smiles
and waving kites,
shrugs off the leer
of the dirty weekend hotel
moored in the harbour’s grimy embrace.
she climbs out of her pink shell
to swallow the bruised mountain.

once more,
her spirit becomes a sail.
her eyes are the horizon.
her feet are freighters from foreign ports.

she walks on water.
she walks on water.

her bare white limbs shine
with phosphorescence.
the stars lean over to sing a softer song,
plant kisses on her forehead. slow time.

in the dazed morning haze
the air is heavy with salt spray and kelp.
wisps of fog drift in with the waves.
a cerulean strand washes up on the sand
amid splintered timber, plastic wrappings,
sodden cigarette butts.
from his guanos-stained perch aloft a jiving mast,
the seagull keeps her secret.

silent words shuffle into cautious lines
scoring ice with impermanent design.

you and the poem teeter alone
on the pond, a balancing act -

arms outstretched, your red overcoat
smells of mothballs and smoke,

underneath one thick glove
a cigarette burn chafes.

untried muscles tremble
tied to second-hand skates,

you enter into something
which cannot be named.

all roots and prayers left ashore,
words in mind gracefully align

with a strange sense of lightness,
nothing to hold.

cold air from your nose
swirls in your throat - then

you turn, and more or less
glide, half degas dancer

striking out toward the centre.
the winter sunshine dazzles you.

it was mostly a mistake
the first time
it happened
(you couldn’t have
anticipated
how good
it would feel)

dizzy
dizzy opiate
day’s despair broke surface
kept your eye on the razor
rosy ribbons mapping
the
pain

a screaming ibis
in the flamboyant tree
broke the trance
broughtyouback
to yourself
again

arms smeared red
soggy Rorschach tests
clogged up
the toilet bowl
(the paper ran out
& feeling guilty hung-
over
used
a dirty sweatshirt

wiped the blood
off the floor)

yousaidyousaidyouknew
(even then)
rage buried deep
underground
would
rise to call you
again

fury
furywouldnotliedown
fury
wouldnotsleep
hungry
yousaiditwouldcomeback
anditdiditdid

you used
a carving knife
instead.

the puzzle
on the dining room table
is broken apart.

strewn across table,
chairs, rug, there are fragments
in the fruit-bowl.

edges, corners - the dog
chews picture scraps
desultorily.

no one has time to clean up the mess,

to put it together again.

previously published in green dragon (2006)

it’s july, it’s an overcast, grey day.
the sable-haired woman standing, smoking,
at the kitchen sink
has disappeared.
they haven’t pasted up
the missing posters yet:
she’s untied her apron.
there’s low cloud cover.

her husband looks straight through her
as he helps himself to scrambled eggs;
(he thinks she’s cleaning the bathroom,
again).

the children bicker back and forth,
brandishing jam smeared knives
across the breakfast table;
they too, have forgotten she’s there.

icy water drips
into a bowl of milky dregs.
she’s supposed to be washing dishes
but she isn’t and doesn’t care.
the air is cleaning fluid and burnt toast:
a reference point
like the lines on her palms
which read escape.

she exhales,
watching cigarette smoke
drawn by an invisible current
drift through the bars and out the open window …
her thoughts spill like a fallen tarot pack:
she imagines a future soundtrack of
swooping gulls, calls to mosque and
dancing thunderstorms.

without warning,
she has crossed the border.
without warning,
she has peeled away the labels:
housekeeper/nurturer/mother/wife/cook;

she has peeled away all ‘thou shalt nots’;
removed every trace of their sticky residue

and vanished.

she feels no remorse. hollow and light now,
she is a creature of myth:
an enticing stranger in dark glasses
and a long silver raincoat,
a crescent moon birthmark
above elegant lips.

her translucent fingers
push against the metal latch.
movements fluid and sure
cast no shadow on the floor.

it’s july, it’s an overcast, grey day.
there’s low cloud cover.
the air is cleaning fluid and burnt toast:
when the back door creaks open,
the cat slips in from the rain.

the penises i know
park next to each other.
they have names like
sani, cherokee, discovery 3.
they devalue with
every passing month.
i wouldn’t drive one
if it was going free.
 
 
previously published in green dragon (2006) and carapace (2006)

Michelle McGrane reviews Uselessly by Aryan Kaganof
Jacana ISBN 1-77009-100-9

buy uselessly now (in south africa) (in united kingdom)

All things are delivered unto me of my Father:
and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father;
neither knoweth any man the Father, save the
Son.
- Matthew 11:27

Often the subject of controversy, artist and visionary Aryan Kaganof has abundant energy and enthusiasm. He works constantly at interpreting creative processes and developing a new language of art. Kaganof defies categorisation, living creatively, devoting his skills to absorbing the world around him and transmuting what he touches into the unusual and revolutionary.

Uselessly, Kaganof’s most recent novel and his first to be published by Jacana, takes the form of a collection of letters to God. As once might expect from a multi-media artist, the humorous, idiosyncratic cover is imaginative and visually appealing. The book comes with recommendations from both God and the Devil.

Dear God, Sorry I haven’t written for so long. It’s been a bad time. I’ve been hurting inside and I just couldn’t put pen to paper. I hope you’ve been okay. I noticed some world wars and stuff. Guess you’ve been busy enough. Had your own shit to take care of without worrying about mine.

The letter writer and protagonist, J J (James Joyce) Uselessly, is born in the South Rand Hospital, Johannesburg, in 1964. He is the illegitmate son of Daphne Nobody, The Sinner Lady, and Harry Uselessly, The Devil. His aptly named mother plays a far from nurturing role, while his father flees the scene before his birth when Daphne refuses to have an abortion.

Like Kaganof himself, Uselessly Jnr. leaves South Africa as a young man to avoid conscription into the apartheid army. We find him aged thirty-five in Amsterdam, indulging his considerable hash habit and penchant for the feet of very young girls, while sending out begging letters to fund his louche lifestyle. That is, until a letter arrives postmarked Sea Point, Cape Town, from his estranged father’s girlfriend, S Cohen. It is a letter which is to change the course of his life.

Harry Uselessly is recovering from the removal of a malignant Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, the “ultimate status symbol” in cancer circles. Uselessly Jnr. takes up an invitation to stay in Cape Town, returning to the country of his birth, both native and foreigner, to spend time with the father he has never known. It becomes apparent that the journey he has embarked upon is more internal than geographical as the novel focuses on the intricacies of a developing emotional involvement between father and son. Through this unexpected connection and the establishment of a paternal bond, Uselessly Jnr. discovers his true identity.

Uselessly Senior is a “shrivelled-up old Jewish man whose brush with cancer has cost him thirty kilos.” Sixty-nine year old Harry is a marvellous paradox. He is an irresponsible, self-absorbed miser, but also a charming Libran with a wonderful sense of humour and frequently unconventional, sage advice for his son. The eccentric old man exhibits an unconstrained zest for life and this, along with the dignity and lack of self-pity with which he faces his illness and consequent chemotherapy treatment, make him hard to dislike.

J J’s letters to God include evocative childhood reminiscences, hard-won insights from lived experience, poetry, philosophy and instances of keenly observed social hypocrisy. Under his unflinching gaze, sometimes abrasive exterior and the shock value of misogynistic sentiments such as “if the bitch is old enough to bleed she’s old enough to butcher”, he is an essentially likeable and profoundly sensitive protagonist. “I’m not a nihilist. I’m not a cynic. I just don’t believe in bullshit anymore,” Uselessly writes in his opening letter. In a later missive he writes: “Finding my dad has made me happy. I never felt this happy before … When I laugh I cry, and I don’t need to cry any more unless I’m laughing. I love you Dad. I love you.” It is in this novel, perhaps more than in any other of his works, that the author reveals his own complex psyche, vulnerability and personal ambivalence.

In an essay entitled “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell offered the following rules for good English: “Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.” Kaganof’s writing is an example of precise, economical prose. Although Uselessly is written in a non-linear fashion, shifting between past and present, his deceptively simple writing style and colloquial tone make for easy, compelling reading. Short sentences are delivered with intelligence, originality and conviction within the paradigms of an engaging and morally complex book.

Uselessly is challenging, funny, mystical, tough and touching. Kaganof has created a courageous and unapologetic portrait of the relationship between a father and son in a story about freedom and the redemptive power of laughter and love. An inimitable novel by an agent provocateur, put this book on your reading list. Even go out and buy it now.

this review first appearred in green dragon #4

by ariel levy
pocket books
isbn 1-4165-2638-2
reviewed by michelle mcgrane

in the opening paragraph of her introduction to female chauvinist pigs, thirty-year-old feminist ariel levy writes: “i first noticed it several years ago. i would turn on the television and find strippers in g-strings explaining how best to lap dance a man to orgasm. i would flip the channel and see babes in tight, tiny uniforms bouncing up and down on trampolines. britney spears was becoming increasingly popular and increasingly unclothed, and her undulating body ultimately became so familiar to me i felt like we used to go out.”
 
the author may be viewed by some as the latest in a long line of uptight radicals, old-fashioned moralists and prissy sissies, waving tattered, fishmoth-eaten flags for an archaic women’s liberation movement, but this is not the case. the provocative, contradictory subject of female empowerment in our plastic, pervasive, ‘post-feminist’ 21st century culture, is exposed in a fresh, articulate and well-researched book.
 
“if you were to put the last five or so years in a time capsule, womanwise, it would look like a period of explosive sexual exhibitionism, opportunism, and role redefinition.”
 
in this celebrity-obsessed, reality tv world, where lusty, busty pole-dancers, outsized breast implants and waxed vaginas are de rigeur, feminism is considered ‘uncool’. but, levy demands, how far have we come when women are socialised to objectify themselves in order to be more desirable? it’s about sexual power and consumerism, she writes. now, more than ever, sex sells. yet “‘raunchy’ and ‘liberated’ are not synonyms.”

 
female chauvinist pigs is an important polemic which calls out for our attention and examination. it is an arch, yet profoundly serious, thought provoking and, ultimately convincing read.
 
ariel levy writes for new york magazine. her work also appears in the new york times, the washington post, vogue, slate, men’s journal and blender magazines.

by kate braverman
seven stories press
isbn 1-58322-571-4

experimental writer kate braverman begins her bold, incandescent fourth novel with a pablo neruda quote, “in this net it’s not just the strings that count / but also the air that escapes through the meshes.”

frida kahlo was an artist, a revolutionary, a morphine addict, a bisexual and a crippled wife. a pagan, she was a solitary renegade, an unrepentant heretic and a water woman.

“i was born in rain and i will die in rain. know me as a river, as harbor. they will say I was a slut with a brazen sailor’s mouth. they will not remember my elegance and restraint. they will say they looked in my eyes and counted one hundred forty-six pelicans flying in a wavering line into a marina at sunset.”

the incantation of frida k. is a fantastical, fictional meditation on the life and times of the mexican visionary.

born in philadelphia and raised in los angeles, the subversive jewish braverman brilliantly depicts kahlo’s ferocity and passion for her work, her physical and psychological pain, and the complex carnage that was her relationship with muralist diego rivera, her husband.

“they will say, she wore flowers, hair a bouquet of intricate ribbons. she dressed as if for a fiesta. listen. that is not the case. i wore gardens pinned to my head like floral tumours rising from my brain. i wore orchids not in celebration, but in mourning. i prepared daily for my funeral. i painted myself with birds and monkeys, with a necklace of thorns and with the well where my heart should be gouged out, as if by scalpel.”

this novel is an exotic and formidably intelligent feast: a tiger lily, a rare black pearl, a flash of violet lightning, a brutal red neon sign. braverman’s sentences are fireworks, mortar rockets and scars that startle and shock. she is a writer of luminous and explosive talent, of secret journals and delirious kisses, of guerilla barricades and life rafts. she stands on the cutting edge of literature, a member of an endangered species.

(cento: a composition made up of quotations from other authors;Latin: patchwork garment)

once there was a path and a girl with chestnut hair - - - we met when we were almost young - - deep in the green lilac park - - you held on to me like i was a crucifix - - as we went kneeling through the dark - - - i loved you in the morning - our kisses deep and warm - - your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm - - yes - many loved before us - i know that we are not new - - in city and in forest they smiled like me and you - - - let me see you moving like they do in babylon - - show me slowly what i only know the limits of - - dance me very tenderly and dance me very long - - dance me to the wedding now - dance me on and on - - - there’s a concert hall in vienna - - where your mouth had a thousand reviews - - i remember you well in the chelsea hotel - - you were famous - your heart was a legend - - i thought you were the crown prince - - of all the wheels in ivory town - and everywhere that you wandered - - love seemed to go along with you - - - lost among the subway crowds - - i tried to catch your eye - - i saw you there with the rose in your teeth - - i’d been waiting - i was sure - - - but you’d been to the station to meet every train - - - i knew i was in danger of losing what i used to think was mine - - just dance me to the dark side of the gym - - chances are i’ll let you do most anything - - so we’re dancing close - the band is playing stardust - - balloons and paper streamers floating down on us - - - i know you’re hungry - i can hear it in your voice - - and there are many parts of me to touch - you have your choice - - - the women in your scrapbook - - - (i was in that army - yes i stayed a little while - - though i wore a uniform i was not born to fight) - - - now your love is a secret all over the block - - - i’m just a station on your way - - - where are you golden boy - - where is your famous golden touch? - - the sun pours down like honey - - and yes it’s come to this - it’s come to this - - hey prince you need a shave - - - i forget to pray for the angels - - and then the angels forget to pray for us - - - your letters they all say that you’re beside me now - - then why do i feel alone? - - i’m standing on a ledge and your fine spider web - - is fastening my ankle to a stone - - - everybody knows that you love me baby - - everybody knows that you really do - - everybody knows that you’ve been faithful - - ah - give or take a night or two - - everybody knows you’ve been discreet - - but there were so many people you just had to meet - - without your clothes - and everybody knows - - - and i can’t wait to tell you to your face - - and i can’t wait for you to take my place - - - i cannot follow you - my love - - you cannot follow me - - i am the distance you put between - - all of the moments that we will be - - - i choose the rooms that i live in with care - - the windows are small and the walls almost bare - - there’s only one bed and there’s only one prayer - - i listen all night for your step on the stair - - - i don’t like your fashion business mister - - and i don’t like those drugs that keep you thin - - - some women wait for jesus - and some women wait for cain - - i was waiting for a miracle - i waited half my life away - - - lately you’ve started to stutter - as though you had nothing to say - - - you don’t love me quite so fiercely now - - you’re weak and you’re harmless - - you’re sleeping in your harness - - - you thought that it could never happen - - to all the people you became - - the rain falls down on last year’s man - - that’s a crayon in his hand - - - like any dealer he was watching for the card - - that is so high and wild - - he’ll never need to deal another - - - (o you’ve seen that man before) - - his golden arm dispatching cards - - (but now it’s rusted from the elbow to the finger - - and he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter) - - - everybody knows that the dice are loaded - - everybody rolls with their fingers crossed - - everybody knows that the war is over - - everybody knows the good guys lost - - everybody knows the fight was fixed - - the poor stay poor - the rich get rich - - that’s how it goes - everybody knows - - - well - I found a silver needle - I put it into my arm - - it did some good - did some harm - - but the nights were cold - and it almost kept me warm - - - in a dream of hungarian lanterns - - in the mist of some sweet afternoon - - some girls wander by mistake - - into the mess that scalpels make - - - morning came and then came noon - - dinner time a scalpel blade - - lay beside my silver spoon - - those who earnestly are lost - - are lost and lost again - - - i journey down the hundred steps - - the street is still the very same - - was i - was i only limping - was i really lame? - - - i can’t run no more with this lawless crowd - - - you say you’ve been humbled in love - - cut down in your love - - - you say you’ve gone away from me - - (i see you’ve gone and changed your name again) - - but i can feel you when you breathe - - - you stumble into this movie-house - then climb in to the frame - - - your pain is no credential here - - of course you’ll say you can’t complain - - you who wish to conquer pain - - love calls you by your name - - - why do you stand by the window - - abandoned to beauty and pride - - the thorn of the night in your chest - - the spear of the age in your side - - lost in the rages of fragrance - - lost in the rags of remorse - - lost in the waves of a sickness - - that loosens the high silver nerves - - - yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control - - it begins with your family - but soon it comes around to your soul - - - well i’ve been where you’re hanging - i think i can see how you’re pinned - - when you’re not feeling holy - your loneliness says that you’ve sinned - - - it’s four in the morning - the end of december - - it’s dark now and it’s snowing - - the cadillacs go creeping now through the night and the poison gas - - the cities they are broke in half and the middle men are gone - - - all the rocket-ships are climbing through the sky - - the holy books are open wide - - - the blizzard - the blizzard of the world - - has crossed the threshold - - - do you remember all of those pledges - - that we pledged in the passionate night - - ah they’re soiled now - they’re torn at the edges - - like moths on a still yellow light - - no penance serves to renew them - - no massive transfusions of trust - - why not even revenge can undo them - - so twisted these vows and so crushed - - - i’m cold as a new razor blade - - your shirt is all undone - - - will you kneel beside this bed - - that we polished so long ago - - your eyes are wild and your knuckles are red - - and you’re speaking far too low - - - you don’t know me from the wind - - you never will - you never did - - - the crumbs of love that you offer me - - they’re the crumbs I’ve left behind - - - and is this what you wanted - - to live in a house that is haunted - - by the ghost of you and me? - - - i’ve lain by this window long enough - - to get used to an empty room - - and your love is some dust in an old man’s cough - - who is tapping his foot to a tune - - - and why are you so quiet now - - standing there in the doorway? - - you chose your journey long before - - you came upon this highway - - remember when the scenery started fading - - i held you till you learned to walk on air - - so don’t look down the ground is gone - - there’s no one waiting anyway - - the smokey life is practised - -everywhere - - - looks like freedom but it feels like death - - - i balance on a wishing well that all men call the world - - we are so small between the stars - so large against the sky - - - and where do all these highways go - now that we are free? - - the age of lust is giving birth - and both the parents ask - - the nurse to tell them fairytales on both sides of the glass - - - there is a war between the rich and poor - - a war between the man and the woman - - there is a war between the ones who say there is a war - - and the ones who say there isn’t - - - there is a war between the left and right - - a war between the black and white - - a war between the odd and even - - - i can’t pretend i still feel very much like singing - - as they carry the bodies away - - - there’s blood on every bracelet - - you can see it - you can taste it - - - (every heart - every heart - - to love will come but like a refugee) - - - too early for the rainbow - too early for the dove - - these are the final days - this is the darkness - this is the flood - - and there is no man or woman who can’t be touched - - but you who come between them will be judged - - - so the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed - - it would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed - - - it’s like our visit to the moon or to that other star - - i guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far - - - it’s over - it ain’t going any further - - i’m sick of pretending - i’m broken from bending - - i’ve lived too long on my knees - - - the river is swollen up with rusty cans - - and the trees are burning in your promised land - - - along with several thousand dreams - - - there’s nothing left to do - - when you know that you’ve been taken - - - it’s CLOSING TIME.

* * *

lyrics taken from: songs of leonard cohen: suzanne; master song; winter lady; stranger song; sisters of mercy; so long marianne; hey, that’s no way to say goodbye; stories of the street; teachers i’m your man: first we take manhattan; ain’t no cure for love; everybody knows; take this waltz songs of love and hate: avalanche; last year’s man; dress rehearsal rag; diamonds in the mine; love calls you by your name; famous blue raincoat the future: the future; waiting for the miracle; closing time; anthem; light as the breeze death of a ladies’ man: iodine; paper thin hotel; memories; death of a ladies’ man songs from a room: the old revolution; the butcher; you know who i am; tonight will be fine new skin for the old ceremony: is this what you wanted; chelsea hotel #2; there is a war various positions: dance me to the end of love recent songs: the guests; humbled in love; the window; the gypsy’s wife; the smokey life

michelle mcgrane and vonani bila

smiling hostess, happy husband,
clean, pink baby tucked neatly in bed,
lighting low, garden flowers
arranged
in sprays of
immaculate ease,
 
formidable
domestic conversation,
resounding silence resumes,
the awful scrabbling for
common ground to
contrived recollections of single days,
 
perfect choice of wine
matches
cordon bleu meal,
filter coffee
winds things up at
a suitable hour,
 
a faultless appearance,
flawless
performance,
silence & sensibilities
compartmentalised,
you & i
sit together,
 
swearing off
picket fences
for the rest of our lives.
 

we stuff our faces,
not for the taste, more
for the feeling of fullness.

about fishing &
the art of loving women,
you were beguiling,
seductively knowledgeable,
 
always made the best
of what you had,
 
a real professional,
you used all the tricks
of the trade
to tip the scales,
 
reeled me in from
cool, deep waters, gasping,
a prize catch on a rusty,
well-used hook,
 
before you gutted
& prepared me
with your favourite sauce.

in sugar-drenched
candy-striped
fascination days
gulped down with mutual adoration,
convinced we needed each other
more than air -
it was you, me
& carole king.
 
now wax-drippings flickering,
carole, queen of
chocolate promises,
broken hearts,
sings plaintively
into endless insomniac night,
defining the well-worn path
you trod across my heart
with every bittersweet note.

the jar of satay sauce
you bought
last year,
is still
in the fridge-door,
i miss you
when i see it.

i’ve kept it hidden
in an ice-box
waiting
for the thaw,
 
for you
to make it
beat again,
 
still
 
quiet
 
nothing

writing is an addiction
like cheap brandy
parcelled
in a paper bag
 
firewater blood
streams flowing
molten rivers
the senses set on fire
 
hand starts writing
loops and curls
turn to
voracious scribbles
 
it feeds, feeds, feeds,
always hungry, insatiable,
raging, rampant,
reaching
 
sleep stumbles
dragging its feet,
settling roughly
in a grudging stupor.