Zodwa Nyoni

My Mothers Bag

My mother’s bag is

A library of everything she has ever bought,
Done, returned, seen, and kept
I have found receipts that are now just blank scraps of paper
That can’t be throw away just in case they are needed
Doctors’ appointments from 1977
Her first boss’s, my grandmother’s, distant friends and relatives
Addresses, birthdays, telephone numbers, known associates
And blood types
The pockets over the years have sewn their own pockets
She has replaced it over and over again
Yet this one bag always seems to find its way back
Hanging off her shoulder
When she’s going to work, to town
Or just downstairs

My mother’s bag is legendary
It has survived children
Out lived crystal vases
Ink spills, leaked perfume
My mother’s bag is a fortress
It keeps things safe
Gold bricks and top secrets can be left in there for months
And still will be there when you come back
It has state of the art sensory detectors
that are wired to her mother`s instinct
That bellows out my name if I get within 10 feet
Screams in repetition, “Back away from the bag!!!”

My mother’s bag is magical
It has everything
Exact change
A toothpick
A comb
Batteries when the remote dies
A butterfly for my earring
Hand cream
Tissue
A bus pass which expires 2 days after mine
My pin, account number and sort code when I forget

My mother’s bag is amazing
And one day it will be my bag
That my children find just as legendary,
A fortress for their belongings,
And magical for their needs.

Retrospect on 16

You buy me flowers
Same as the ones your brother buys his girlfriend
Call me late at night
Deep toned voice that is yet to break
Tells me I’m pretty
Compares me to a starry night that you don’t understand
But, your sister said id like
Say we are deep, endless, and timeless
Ask to know me more
More than just my smile
That lights like a billion constellations orbiting your soul
You tell me these things and I fold
Into your arms
Let you complete your love line into mine
`Cause that’s as close as my mother will let us go
You say you love me because we can spend a day together
Say you could love me better than any love song can sing
Love can define
Cupid can aim
Dreams could imagine
Kisses can taste
Emotions can feel
Needs can want
Poetry has written
But you can’t say the way love can love
Cause this teenage love affair
Only exists in the context of Facebook
Face pages that say you heart me
I am wifey, baby
Sickly sweet sweet talk, sweet moves
Sweet nothing’s, sweet something’s
And I fold,
Let you complete your love line into mine
Cause that’s as close as my mother will let us go

On Valentine’s Day;
You give me Mackie D`s under dimly lit light bulbs
Dried sticky cola on plastic tables is where I accidentally place my hand
Try to wipe it under and instead, find chewed gum
At the movies you share with me
Your Orange Wednesdays discount
A large coke, 2 straws, and medium popcorn
Coz it’s cheaper than buying me my own
You walk me to the bus stop and wait with me
We let buses go past, squeeze in goodnight kisses
Under timetables and graffiti glass
Our “come in for coffee” moment
I tell you I fight with my mother
You say your father left
So, we obviously must from this shared moment
Create an understanding between us
Draw each other close and do what my mother
Doesn’t know we think about
I fold; I let you enter for longer
Unprotected and naked your love line in mine
Makes me fight with my mother even more
Chose between my friends and you
Make me wish Maybelline could make me believe
I was born with it, because you
Don’t tell me I m pretty any more

We begin to fight more
You say the battery is dead
When your phone is clearly engaged
I kiss my teeth, cut the phone while you speak
Make wise cracks, like
“Have a Snickers and get some nuts”
Just to piss you off
You call me a drama queen,
I call you a downgrade from my last
We go back and forth, forth and back
Till I cry on purpose to make you crumble
And then I win, and we are back to being in love again
Hearts blushing, butterflies fluttering
Sickly sweet sweet talk, sweet moves
Sweet nothing’s, sweet something’s
This is as real as this teenage love affair will get
This is what we have, not what
You try to make me believe we have
I do not love you the way love needs to be loved
Only how to kiss you and make it seem I do
You don’t know what it means when a man
Truly loves a woman

We don’t have years between us, just days
No romantic holidays, only half terms
No communication, just unlimited texts
No trust, just he says she says
No lifelong commitment ceremonies, just the time
it takes to say your last name and my first name in playful giggle
We have a teenage love affair
That is just as young as we are.

Youth Service Camps: the inside story

Marching as graduates; they powered
Clad in green fatigues, red-and-green berets
Black combat boots exploding the dirt beneath their feet
and AK47`s raised in gun salutes
The Green Bombers of the New State
Compulsory Education System marched
On dusty roads exposing education at its best,
In a truly Zimbabwean manner
Singing revolutionary songs, chanting
"Long live Robert Mugabe!"
"Down with whites!"
"Down with Morgan Tsvangirai!"
“Down with Britain!”
“Down with America!”
Expelling the demons of the West
Renouncing allegiance to the opposition
Proving their loyalty

Regiments of former prefects,
Head boys and head girls
Underachievers and over achievers
Sons and Daughters of Ncube`s, Dube`s, Moyo`s
Makoni`s,Shoko`s and Zondo`s
Paraded diplomas in diplomatic brutality
And coercive liberation achieved with
Study guides of:
How to make gasoline bombs,
How to set up roadblocks
How to detain and terrorize,
How to intimidate and mobilize
How to hate Zimbabweans: Whites and blacks
And How to maintain Mugonomics; by hook or by crook!
In place of Marechera, Hove,
Vera and Dangarembga

During graduation they danced
The dances of the un-redemptive power of violence
Over the gates of white colonialist
They planted illegal colonies on bought land.
Ransacked and burned the very land
Their teachers coveted
Burnt unpatriotic tongues speechless
Eliminated black labourers
Who protected their puppeteers
Forced their mothers, sisters,
Distant aunties and cousins over boarders
To be burnt by karma’s guise of xenophobia
Under lit mattresses and beg for mercy
On bended knees at the ends of machetes
They were ruthless
They were the soil on which fears grew on
They were made to hate themselves
They were made to hate us
They were made to hate change
They were made to hate the past
They made to hate the truth
They were made to follow orders
They were made
By one man
By one voice
By one fist
By one leader
They were made

Soweto Up

The summer sun crept up behind us
Dancing with the dusty morning.
Small hard stones clicked under heels
Women cocked their hips out, chinesse whispering loudly
Our fathers waved to the day in cramped combies

The sun crept closer.
The guns cocked louder.
The school bells chimed harder;
Rebellion fleshed out from the earth of the playgrounds
We, standing uniform against uniform, chanting

They hoisted automatic rifles and carbines
Chests heaving in gun salutes only traitors would know
Some, knew our mother`s faces from our own,
Our fathers on occasion. Yet, in military rows
We were no different from the faces of the men,
They had drunken beerhall brawls with

We chanted, they barricaded us
We chanted, gun barrels pointed
We chanted, placing right foot first left foot next,
They paced left foot back, right foot next
Bricks flew like soundless birds flying overhead
Tear gas canisters exploded like water bombs
We played cowboys and Indians with real guns
Snap shots clicked of limp kids
We chanted;
“Impilo yethu, ulimi lwethu, impilo yethu
Impilo yethu, ulimi lwethu, impilo yethu
Mother tongue, motherland, mother tongue, motherland
Mother tongue, motherland, MOTHER TONGUE, MOTHERLAND!
Asking, why are YOU blowing up South Africa?
Why are we not de jure?
Why is chanting terrorism?
Why is dompass my passport?
Why can`t we be Einstein’s?
Why is our hair too thick for your pencils?
Why you in a mansion, we townships?
Why you vote and we die?
Why is propaganda louder than our screams?
Why you blowing up Soweto?”

Tactful dispersion lasted for days,
Propellers cut the crisp airTankers of combat boots deployed on to the streets
To patrol us like ownerless and uncontrollable dogs
That needed to be neutered or better yet, put down.
Each dew of every morning carried the bodies of the last;
Heavy and painful.
This liberation struggle had only just begun.

A letter for Mama Oluwale:

Iya mi mama, Dear Mama

It is early morning and the air
Sits in the palms of the wind and glides
Round the trees, past the holes in the fences
And on to the dance floor of cassava and okra soup
Iya mi many suns have risen since we last spoke to each other
I miss you; I miss you like the soil misses the rains
And the sun misses the companionship of father’s crops
Iya mi, where i have been it rains ; a lot more than lately
It is heavy and unforgiving like the rains
Of the summer we spent away in Calabar when I was younger
Se e runti?, do you remember?
It was the summer I discovered how to make
Toy cars with wire and bottle caps; it constantly rains here iya mi
But nothing grows with nourishment, not even the people
They only seem to grow with stems of resentment and anger towards me
I am a weed on their land and they always uprooted me
In a cruel and disruptive way
I am convinced it is Eshu and Anansi,
the tricksters from the elder`s tales who trouble me
without reason in the guises of authority
They call me names I do not know and expect me to answer them
They play the games of Ayo but the stones are their fists
And instead of against the ground they hit against me
And I cannot dodge them,
Somehow their games always end with me confined
In their prisons or madhouses and them on the other side
Laughing , full pot bellied laughs
Like satisfied hyenas after a hunt
They make a mockery of me.
Iya mi they make a mockery of me
And I fear they have not come alone
In the night i am a disobedient child needing to be punished
Do you remember the stories
of the disobedient children take down to the river bed
left for Ninki Nanka to come for them; Iya mi, it is here
and in the darkness of the night i am scared it will wake
Pull me to the depths of the waters and i will no longer write you
I will no longer tell of the things I have done,

The places i have been and woman,that I love

Iya mi, edakun e wa mu mi, please mama come for me
Because they punish me
For being Oluwale
For needing to sleep at night
For walking along the streets
For living, loving , laughing
They punish me for dancing
to the rhythm of the city
Iya mi, edakun e wa mu mi, please mama come for me
Before I can no-longer come back to you.

David.