Devoted to publishing the best of South African poetry, prose and art
In this issue:
POETRY
Suitcases, Sisanda Kubeka 16 // Silence in Church, Zizipho Bam 18 // Koeksisters, Jerome Coetzee 20 // A cargo lounge heroine, Stephanie Sears 22 // You’re so cool, Anna Idelevich 24 // The Murder, Fatma Ibrahim 25 // Welkom, Kevin Goddard 26 // antjie krog as ‘n uitmergelende strofe, Johann Van der Walt 28 // Hintsa’s Portrait, Sithembele Xhegwana 29 // winter solstice, Marcelle Olivier 30 // sunday., Tshegofatjo Makhafola 31 // Stewels, Dion Loubser 32 // The Green Grass, Musawenkosi Nyembe 33 // ʼn Bitter en blinde tyd, Charika Swanepoel 34 // Time Longer Than Rope, Peter Dreyer 35 // die hulp, Sheldan Dolf 37 // The Hunt, Trevor Conway 38 // Rain in September, Bibhu Padhi 39 // Seagull in Stellenbosch, Paul
A Cargo Lounge Heroine
The small tonnage cargo
privy to south pacific moods
was obligated to swell and wind
for its fearless disposition.
High up on the castle
a wide-eyed lounge tilting
to sea and sky
offered the unyielding rover
a tern’s weightless pause.
In dawn’s watered inks
land couldn’t keep me.
I was picked off islands
heavy with lithic spells and iron trees
by a big-armed crew.
They held me up to the restive air
by my wing tips.
If a leeward cuff of breeze still fettered me
to sandy shallows,
adventure soon intruded.
At my wayward elbow, a wood bar
polished like an English Major
stuck in an outpost,
metallized with the brogue of tankards
and cocktail utensils,
concocted me a homecoming
from the soon, not yet, a distant perhaps.
When a shark hide sailor
turned Beethoven on loud
for the dolphins combing the prow,
a green island wrung from the horizon,
became elixir of joy.
I went scouting ahead of myself
to make sure we’d never arrive.