i’m linking things i’m beginning to see
the length of this organ, my dying land
all the mistakes my god has learned
they say the body is wise
in truth and in suffering
biding a time that knows no limits
i’m linking things i’m beginning to see
what became of the san people
who can tell us what happened
and the truth must be the truth
inside our bodies
the terrible words must burn.
Mxolisi Nyezwa is founder and editor of Kotaz, now in its fourteenth year.
STEVEN LEYVA
Get down to the smallest birthright / I cannot claim: say beignets / and doesn’t the stutter of hot oil start / to sizzle the small plates of memory? / Faces powdered with sugar, no thought /
to whose ancestors cut which cane, sing /
a hymn of “mmm, mmm, mmm.”
LOREN GOODMAN
In these last hours / Of the Passover Seder / It is said by the higher / Chasidic Scholars that time / Loses its essence and that /
We are at least once, with /
The help of memory (at this /
Time “even the future can be /
Remembered”) able to defeat / It. Something to do /
With the wine.
MORIEL ROTHMAN-ZECHER
The chunk of the ball / On the cracked blacktop / And our torsos so covered / In sweat nearby the sea / Swells and the smell seeps / Into our hair and the air / Turns into night all around us / And the pebbles of the ball / Still tickle our palms as smoke / Trickles into our lungs...