dykefurytraumapoems

[dykefurytraumapoems]

if we could

If we could, we’d be dazzling. We’d be cross-legged on my mother’s kitchen floor or holding hands on the train. 

If we could, we’d be Facebook-official. You’d be on my lockscreen and my name would sit  alright in your mother’s mouth.

If we could, we’d be delirious. We’d be leaping to Sharpie our initials on the moon of I’d kiss your cheek in public.

But we can’t. We’re drinking coffee in a hotel room and there’s no one here but us. For now, that’s enough. 

[dykefurytraumapoems]

everything is shit and i’m gay

We’re not magic in the miracle sense, but more like her arms are a bramble patch I’m wading through barefoot, but not a single thorn touches me and I emerge without a scratch. 

When she tells me I am soft,  it doesn’t sound like a warning.  We’re not magic in the Houdini style, but when I drink water, I’m convinced I can bite right through the glass and spit pearls into her hands.  Sometimes the world shells us like peas;

When she opens me up, it doesn’t feel like an invasion. 

She is not the sun. We tell each other we bleed red and never ask for evidence.  Isolation is not a mask loneliness wears to us, it means staying alive  and falling in love at the same time. 

[dykefurytraumapoems]

?? wat er

I once heard that more is known about the bottom of the sea than the human brain, which means that my amygdala is a submarine, sending out distress signals since it lost the light. For months? Years? I don’t know how many times I have cycled over flooded drains, inspecting my reflection, wishing I could be filtered clean like the rain. I once heard that babies are born knowing how to swim, but I’ve forgotten since, which means I trusted land too much. I sprouted coral teeth and chewed them blunt on sand, drank so much saltwater that my lungs burst and my heart shrivelled like a date; fossilised head-first, palms upturned towards the surface.

[dykefurytraumapoems]

on mass

A childhood of Sundays spent traipsing across aged floors, walking in time with bells rung out of sight. Mother teaches you surrender before you have known fight, gazing up at candles and glowing glass, crossing your eyes, multiplying Jesus thrice - holy triplets! This is infant sacrilege, within four walls which give shape to shapeless things, like shame and conviction. That man who raises  the Eucharist is a good man. You know because of the way his words rise and hang, fragrant, awaiting inhalation. You know His blood before your own; know better still the voice of the congregation, thrust up high and bashful, cautious even in devotion.

[dykefurytraumapoems]

bus drivers sonnet

All my life I’ve searched for adoration like I’ve seen between bus drivers. They conduct public affairs through nods and waves, their intimacy almost imperceptible, but not quite. I watch on from the outside. Their love is perfect because it is fleeting; time never dampens their passion before distance steals it away. A thousand definitions of polyamory  couldn’t set love free like these drivers do. I am in awe of their generosity, sitting still and pressing on for closeness, how they make a mirror out of themselves by seeking out their own reflections.

[dykefurytraumapoems]

sonnet

Queen of long, long walks at dawn, black coffee, white mugs, tiny spoons, pickled cucumbers, cream crackers, salt, sparkling water, sums in pencil on squared paper, long, long walks at night, streetlamps’ whisper and hum, slight shivering, sharp focus, smooth skin, grey bruises, light cotton, silver necklaces, lost earring, pink bruises, white blisters, clear head, scattered thoughts, soft dizziness, thin-lipped smirks, criticisms whispered behind long fingers, gold rings, always witty, never kind, small white teeth in rows like pearls, clean nails, nicotine habit, menthol filters, says nothing, knows it all.

[dykefurytraumapoems]

the widow relocates

Haven’t I always said there’s no place so clinical as a house no one’s lived in? Not even hospitals, where at least people have been born and died, rejoiced and mourned. Better for four walls to have held folks hurtling through extremes, than to hold nothing at all. This is a new build.

Single occupant. The air has not yet known lungs, nor has the carpet known shoes nor the doors known what it is to burst in thrill or slam in rage.

There are no shadows, no stains, no scribbles above skirting boards, and no you, so, no desire to fill the walls with pictures, the couch with cushions, or the bathroom cupboard with my lone, wretched toothbrush. I don’t want to settle in.

I want to empty the boxes out the windows instead, so all our things become someone else’s problem. I want to drown myself in the kitchen sink because surely this bathtub is too big for one person, surely this house is too big for one person?

For days, I have stared at this unmade bed, waiting for someone to open the curtains, but the room stays dark and sunless, the mattress bare and cold.

[dykefurytraumapoems]

ancestry

He was the blueprint, he seemed to have achieved it all. Good job, nice house in the States, cheery Facebook updates of the dog tucked under the table,  where a game of chess had been paused to leaf through the Sunday papers.

Uncle David was no more familiar to me than a cryptic crossword clue; mystery man miles across the sea mentioned only with the fondest contempt. How many years had he waited for an embrace like this?

They used to joke that he and Spike -  who was always Spike, and never boyfriend, partner, or husband -  were married at home, but not  when they crossed the state border for work, as per the American laws at the time.

He was ‘our David’ in spite of these things, our David who’d done so well for himself,  our David whose absence was noted  without analysis, our David who worked for NASA now, never David whose name I found on a list of queer anthropologists

years later, while I dreamed up a life that seemed impossible; whose  trajectory shaped mine, and whose  survival of those years of silence let me wonder where I would hide while I waited for their tolerance. 

[dykefurytraumapoems]

a portrait of queer hands

liberating a limb of aloe vera from its waxy skin      in early morning      with a knife that shines like dawn feeling how it clings to your fingers       like it needs you      ethereal and undeniable 

in the pale sun  that filters through your bedroom window 

bringing it to your lips       tasting its tastelessness rubbing it into your left hand      ring finger to thumb

where the skin is dry and cracked which have worked hard       for salvation

[dykefurytraumapoems]

things that will happen before cis people read one fucking book on gender instead of asking me stupid questions about it

The English language, moving as it always has in its slow, winding way, will gobble up new words for hope and love and tiredness, then suddenly

turn back in on itself, accidentally biting its tail, and disintegrating into a long line of cinder. 

May Day celebrations will return in a big way. Little girls and little boys in petticoats will dance

around the maypole, dizzying, until they merge into one enormous giggling child, trampling spectators.

People in sepia photographs will squabble about  the details of the apocryphal Good Old Days. How long did they last, and how to define them?

Was it a fortnight last summer? Was it  every day before the youngest grandchild was born?

History books will grow tongues and start to tell the truth to whoever opens them. Cash machines too - 

between transactions, they’ll spell out Aesop’s fables, warning against the perils of selfishness and greed.

We will start speaking in only premonitions, and the future will scratch itself onto old church windows. I’ll write my own epigraph well in advance, to make sure 

it’s done properly, because the dead know better  than to leave important things up to the living. 

[dykefurytraumapoems]

night bus

The quiet revolutionary is back on our airwaves, telling us to keep the faith. There are cyphers in the  radio static. I’m decoding them in this night bus window-fog - we’ve been between stops for years. They say silence is cyanide to the spirit; they say language is a  slow-moving beast. My mother found out everything you told me in your letters. I’d wrapped them all in cellophane,  but she read it on my teeth. She crossed her arms and washed the dishes with her eyes shut, so I packed my bags, paid my fare and began to listen again. The quiet revolutionary on the radio says that out time has almost come at last, but that little agitator is just a voice behind the stereo grill, and I’m alone here on the outside, disturbing the peace.

[dykefurytraumapoems]

in the dream i had last night

The sun has given up on us and you, you are wearing the darkness like a scowl. There is nothing around but gold sand for

miles, and turmeric rice raining from the sky. Everything is perfectly cold and the three  of us are triangulated spitefully, glaring.

Wild things begin to tear themselves from  settee cushions on the horizon. I am trampled by an elephant; my broken ribs staple me

to the ground, to watch you torn apart by a lion. he looks on and laughs, he laughs and laughs, and then some great winged thing

plucks him into the air, and he howls until  he disappears from sight. Then we are alone, and I am wishing I had asked you to kiss me

goodbye. I’m wishing I had said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry” until you vanished from my dreams and  I knew hat you’d forgiven me. Instead, a dozen

mourners wearing our faces dig a shallow grave for you. The vulture, watching overhead, considers picking at my skin, to create a wake for one, but 

only circles, circles, finding these proceedings, in spite of the sticky brilliance of our blood, just  too bleak to scrounge one last meal together.

[dykefurytraumapoems]

inventory of aunties in the british south african diaspora

after @baby-jalebi

auntie with a cloth in hand, wiping red earth from tiny feet, strapping another baby to her back every time the moon is new. mascara-laden auntie slapping hollows into her daughters’ cheeks, auntie acrid with acetone stink and nails painted shocking pink. ageing auntie muddling stories from the old country with her  monthly shopping trip. aunties folding chives into potato salad,  washing rice, washing dishes, washing frustration down the drain like suds. stubborn aunties speaking Afrikaans over the heads of english children, shivering in british summertime. aunties on the edge of something inconceivable, biting their tongues at the dinner table, leaping up to gather salt, pepper, coriander. new auntie appraised with suspicion like a beef cut. childless auntie arrived late, confined to the perimeter of conversation. eldest auntie flipping through pictures, making lists of the dead. tutting auntie who buys me clothes, holding wedding photos in front of my face with eyebrows raised. boy-proud aunties trying to find a reason to smile at me. I cut my hair, whistle tunes on beer bottles and look up for their approval, but all these aunties have turned away and crowded around the family album, pointing with clinking fingers: look how young we were, look how we glowed at home, see? we were so alive then, you wouldn’t understand. 

[dykefurytraumapoems]

hideous dyke almost-sonnet

we live in a room of rectangular things. she is always bumping to corners, always covered in bruises, cursing her thighs for being so soft. there’s a basket of flowers dying on the windowsill; I weave daisies into her hair, she feeds me violets, bud by bud. I suck the bruises out each night, learn to like their bitterness, how it coats my tongue and teeth. she sews stories onto our bedsheets - we clamber over the ottoman - my pillowcase is full  of denouements. when we sleep, we sleep for a thousand nights, like this, in her dreams. 

[dykefurytraumapoems]

braai

there’s a beer-bellied coven round the braai, turning the wors until they’re black. they fill valleys in their throats with cold bitter and cackle at the dirty jokes they trade and drop between the coals.

their spring-heeled children, with calves smarted sunset-pink, skip through a tangle of language, boxing the ground with their feet, flattening the grass their fathers  have nurtured through drought.

in the kitchen, aunties drip rusty tears into potato salad. the meat is cold when it hits their plate, and while they eat, everybody at the table chants lekker, and pretends nothing is missing.