The Wrist

By KOLBUS MOOLMAN

 

from the poem cycle Anatomy

 

The wrist, the right one,
is a wrench.

The wrist, not the left, is rust.

It is red metal amongst stone.
It is brittle tin. It is clanking iron.

The wrist is unsettled.
It does not join or turn or fold or meet.

It grinds, stone against stone, mid-day
sunlight against old iron.
Cold night against cold stars.

It is a sharp moon. A blunt moon.
Made blunt on the blade of a hill.

The wrist, my wrist, my right,
is all that holds me up.

Keeps me perpendicular
to the black grave.

 

 

Kobus Moolman is an award-winning South African poet and playwright. He teaches creative writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.

Click here to purchase Issue 04

The Wrist

Related Posts

Hall of Mirrors

November 2023 Poetry Feature: Virginia Konchan and Gabriel Spera

GABRIEL SPERA
Gracefully we hold each other / architects and optimists / always at arm’s length like / congenital dreamers / tango masters slinkily coiled / bright candles in a hall of mirrors / whatever I propose you propose / to conquer repeating and repeating / the opposite.

a golden field of wheat

Thresher Days

OSWALDO VARGAS
The wheat wants an apology, / for taking me this long / to show my wrists / to the thresher boy. // Finally a summer where he asks how my parents are / and my jaw is ready, / stretched open so he can hear about them, / easier. // I may look different after, / I will need a new name.

People gather in protest in front of a building; a man (center) holds up a red flag

Picket Line Baby

AIDEED MEDINA
White women give my father shaded looks./ Bringing babies to do their dirty work,/ mumbled in passing. // I am paid in jelly doughnuts / for my day on the boycott. // My dad leads my baby brother / to the front of the grocery store doors / for a meeting with the manager.