You fitted so snugly
through the window I opened wide for you.
Then you shut it with a bang giving me your back.
The shards, too small, took forever to gather.
I put them in that wooden bowl you made.
Then I bought shatter-proof glass,
lined it with black blinds that do not open,
so that I will never be tempted
to open the window again.
Makhosazana Xaba is the author of These Hands and Tongues of Their Mothers.
NICOLE COOLEY
The incinerator smoke an incision in the sky. / My daughter no longer small yet still I want to swallow her back into my body. / Sky a scalding. / My daughter asks me to stop saying, I wish this wasn’t the world you have to live in. / In my dream my girl is the size of a thumb I catch between my teeth. / Sky all smoke.
CIGAN VALENTINE
We ask you where you had gone, / And you say you became blue / From when the sky had swallowed you, / And spat you back up. / For you are the worst type of unbeliever. / You only believe in love. / You do not believe in forgiveness. / Before eating,
/ We recite your list of those who have wronged you.
ANZHELINA POLONSKAYA
Snow, listen up. Your eyes are dead. / We know full well we’re being led / like hostages of universal blindness. / Who are we, then? Unknown and homeless. // We push ahead, there’s howling all around. / And far away we see a burning bush. / The birds that flew off south / will not return. Our Rome is smashed.
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