Anglophone Cameroon Poetry
Edited by Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi
Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi was born and raised in Cameroon and holds doctorates from the University of Yaoundé , Cameroon, and from McGill University, Canada. She writes fiction under the pen name Makuchi, is a literary critic, and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at North Carolina State University, USA. A Pushcart Prize nominee and one of the editors of “Reflections: An Anthology of New Works by African Women Poets” forthcoming from Lynne Rienner, she is the author of three books: Gender in African Women’s Writing: Identity, Sexuality, and Difference, Your Madness, Not Mine: Stories of Cameroon and The Sacred Door and Other Stories: Cameroon Folktales of the Beba and many book chapters. Some of her work has appeared in Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters, Crab Orchard Review, The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad, Thamyris, Obsidian: Literature of the African Diaspora, Mythium: The Journal of Contemporary Literature and Cultural Voices and reprinted in Worldview, Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought, The Rienner Anthology of African Literature, The Anchor Book of Modern African Stories, Canadian Woman Studies: An Introductory Reader, African Women Writing Resistance, African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory and African Gender Studies: A Reader.
Preface
“Africa in miniature/l’Afrique en miniature” is a phrase often used to describe Cameroon: a mosaic of diversity in cultures, ethnicities, languages, religions, even geography (from dense equatorial forests in the south to the littoral coast, to the semi-forest regions of the southwest, the grasslands of the west and northwest, and the sahel regions of the north). It is the only African nation to have been colonized by three European nations: Germany, Britain, and France. Its colonial history begins with the late 19th century scramble for and partition of Africa by European powers that legitimizes German colonial authority over German Kamerun. With Germany’s defeat in WWI, British and French forces take possession of the territory; the Northern Cameroons and the Southern Cameroons going to Britain, and the rest of the territory to France. But anti-colonial resistance throughout the territory results in French Cameroun gaining the right to self-government in 1958 and independence in 1960. The fate of the British Cameroons is decided in 1961 by a plebiscite. The British Northern Cameroons joins Nigeria, while the British Southern Cameroons opts for cohabitation with French Cameroun. Cameroon becomes a United Republic in 1972 and a Republic in 1982.
Today, Cameroon comprises ten administrative regions (formerly known as provinces), an eighty percent francophone majority, a twenty percent anglophone minority, and a policy of official bilingualism coexisting with over two hundred indigenous languages. Cameroon is the only African nation to adopt two colonial languages–English and French–as its official languages after achieving independence and reunification. More than five decades later, the British/French colonial legacy remains central to what it means to be Anglophone, to be Francophone, to be Cameroonian. It is intrinsic to the representation of postcolonial identities in (Anglophone) Cameroon literature. To be Anglophone or Francophone in this postcolony is to be much more than a speaker of English or French. “Anglophone” and “Francophone” are codes fraught with meanings that can simultaneously conjure cultural, political, linguistic complexities/tensions complicated by concepts of nation and/or ethnicity.
Anglophone Cameroon writing generally reflects the postcolonial malaise of a union that for some never was and therefore in need of dissolution; a union that for others is fragile, diseased, in dire need of healing and reconciliation. Anglophone Cameroon literature is as such obsessed with what is known as “The Anglophone Problem,” for it showcases the anxieties of a marginalized group of people that is required to assimilate and often deprived of the rights of full citizenship. Although some writers consistently portray the internal colonization of Anglophones by the postcolonial nation-state apparatus, much of the literature, nevertheless, explores how gender, class, culture, ethnicity interact with state power and traditional institutions as they continue to shape postcolonial conditions (Cameroonian, African) in a global society. The new poems presented here are not a comprehensive representation of Anglophone literary production but they offer readers a window into contemporary Anglophone Cameroon writing that is actively engaging local, national, international and global issues.
John Ngong Kum Ngong holds a Masters in African Literature and a Certificate in Reading in a Foreign Language from the University of Birmingham, England. He has been a school administrator for over two decades with the Ministry of Secondary Education. Some of his poems have appeared in Nedjma, Cameroon Anthology of Poetry and The Ngoh Kuoh Review. He has four poetry collections: Walls of Agony (2006) which won the pioneer EduArt Bate Besong Prize for poetry in 2007, Chants of A Lunatic (2007), Strange Passions (2010), Snatched From The Grave (2010), and a play Battle For Survival (2006).
WHITED SEPULCHRE
I know whited sepulchre
you do not feel anymore
the touch of our done fingers
which for want of acceptance
cling to the wall of furore.
For close to sixty years
now we have lived like internees
working our fingers to the bone
for idiots to reap the harvest.
You know too well backpedaller
I have had to run rusty rings
round your compact as butter neck
in public places and at home.
You filled up the only wellspring
from which we washed off frustration
indigent and naked like air
without a pound of flesh to spare
struggling to stitch our torn lives.
You are aware snake in the grass
we have for these years eaten dust
and mopped marble floors with dry tears.
Our nakedness hits you like fart
as we sweat blood filling the holes
Phobia has burrowed in our hearts.
Neither love nor the fawning hands
of classism can reshape us.
I will not set myself ablaze
like the abused Tunisian youth
for the machete screams of freedom
to spread like dry season fire
from the harsh highlands of the north
to the soft lowlands of the south.
I will flit from hamlet to town
to tug the heartstrings of Reason
and torch my people’s consciences
to knock down all old foundations.
Sarah Anyang Agbor has a PhD in English from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She was a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Scranton, PA, and is currently an Associate Professor of African Literature at the University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon. Her works include published articles in journals in Nigeria, Cameroon, the USA and the book, Critical Perspectives on Commonwealth Literature (2010).
I TOO SING CAMEROON1
I too sing Cameroon.
I am the ninth and tenth provinces
Or is it regions?
I just want to be human,
Not superhuman
Accepted as a person
I know how you perceive me:
“Traitor”, “Opposition”, BamiAnglo2
A figment of your own imagination.
Why do you see an Anglophone and you hear-
“Gunshots!? Crisis!? Protests!? Grumblings!?
You got criminals! We’ve got criminals!”
I too can feel
I too can dream
I too can lead.
But you look down on me
And call me “Anglofou”3
You say you are the top dog
And I the underdog.
Now I am the country nigger “Anglofou”
Now I am the house nigger.
Tomorrow
When the stakes are down
Will it be my turn to look down at you?
Will I call you “Franco Fool?”
Or will I call you brother?
That tomorrow will surely come
No one will dare say to me:
“Anglofou”4; “Parlez Anglais”5
“Les Anglos-la”6
Besides, I have walked up the ladder
With the virus of bilingualism
And I will sit at the table
And you will see the good in me.
I too, sing Cameroon!
1 Inspired by the talk on Harlem Renaissance, DVC series at the American Embassy in Yaoundé on 28-09-2007.
2 A Bamileke who has grown up with English as a second language, hence, such a person is a Bamileke from predominantly French-speaking Cameroon by origin and Anglophone by culture.
3 Anglophone fool; crazy English-speaking person
4 An abusive term, most often used by Francophones, to denigrate Anglophones.
5 Speak English
6 Those Anglophones
Nanche Billa Robert has taught at several colleges and the university in Douala. He is currently an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Maroua. “the inferior” is taken from his anthology of poems titled “The Deprived.”
the inferior
we bounced out of the egg
in a minuscule zone
worth
wealth
in a miniature of Africa
doomed to
the depth by pied tongues
we stand
at akimbo
and see fly away our timbers
and spot
machines
drain dry
our oil
and dig deep
our diamond
and see everything
worth us worsen
and perceive no trappings of innovation
just the vanishing of our opulence
in this darkest
of continents
in a large mighty world
created by jehovah
from far across
the sea two fair men
came saw and conquered
but from same
womb we drove them
after they dropped
a
knife
and
carved us into
French and English
from the same womb we
were given life
yet I’m an inferior
Irmagard Anchang Langmia is a Cameroonian-born immigrant living in the United States. She has a Masters in English from the University of Yaoundé , Cameroon, and has taught in high schools in Cameroon and North America and at Bowie State University, MD. She is currently an Advanced Special Student at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her first poetry collection titled Visions in Mind’s Eye was published on October 31, 2011 by iUniverse, Inc, Bloomington, Indiana.
For the child soldier trapped in an elusive war raging in the valleys and
hills of Africa’s heartland, child soldiers captured for free or kidnapped
to serve the brutal, infectious, and morbid interest of rebel leaders and a
ruthless gang of criminals permanently on rampage for ransom;
For the child soldier drugged and forced to shoot at close range human beings
that become objects in a child’s bloody eyes, guns balanced on arms that
dangle, then aim like robots at fixed targets; For the kidnapped daughter,
mother, sister and aunt, sex-slaved and trapped in the brutal lunacy of death
squads masquerading as future potential leaders of change who will usher in
democracy to a war torn African nation already ravaged by civil war;
We can only hope that one day, just as history books have told stories of the
past, history books will again tell the stories of warfare in our time, so future
generations will savor its richness and continue to tell their own … and for
the child soldier and the woman, there is hope … hope that one day this will
come to pass …
________________________________
Under the Boabab Tree (Poetic Prose)*
They call him Captain Jaminah!
But his real name is James Musigi, the feared rebel leader
with an army of five thousand boy soldiers and men alike.
Up the hills, far from the thatched, mud-brick houses, they
reside and strike impromptu, when the villagers of Mbuta
are either awake or asleep; They invade, they rampage,
they rape and they carry bounty. Beautiful women, they take
hostage and give to the master Jaminah; that is their
mission …
No rule of law here! All is vast expanse of dry land, with
scanty brush and dust in the heart of the dry season, dust that
rubs into eyes already reddened by the dirt, and skin thickly
burnt by rays of hot sunlight that penetrate layers of charcoal
black skin.
With sparsely populated houses located in this part of the world,
Life is hard, yet they survive.
The baobab tree located, within the peripheries of four
lone thatched huts; and a roofless shade for me and them …
That is where they found me…
That was yesterday …
Under the baobab tree on this early morning sat Baba Ali
in his compound, with a chewing stick in his mouth roughly
brushing red gummy teeth, decayed from the everyday chew
of red kola nuts and white bitter Kola.
In the yard, the cocks were madly chasing the hungry hens;
The hens were madly chasing the hungry chickens;
Ten dirty kids who wore torn military, green, khaki shorts,
with the dust of the previous day still lingering on their
ashy skin, scurried around the mad chickens in a giggly,
acrobatic display of fun-filled, craziness, as they eagerly
peeled corn off the rough edges of the cob and threw
anxiously to the chickens; while the early sunshine lighted
upon the mud bricks that enveloped the four houses in
Baba Ali’s compound, announcing the beautiful break of
dawn.
Then the wives of Baba Ali started trotting out of their
brown mud-brick houses at sunrise.
Nana Mati came out with a broom-stick and started sweeping
the compound vigorously, unperturbed by the noisiness of the
kids feeding the chickens close by.
She had on a wrapper that was tied criss-cross to the back
of her neck.
Her feet were bare.
Then Nana Efume stepped out of her kitchen door, stretched
her arms wide, yawned loudly and went back inside her house.
She came out shortly again with a fiber tray, and started cracking
egusi with her teeth, dumping the cracked ones in a
brown curved calabash.
She was wearing a black nylon skirt with worn yellow buttons at
the front, and a yellow polo blouse that had turned black from the
kitchen smoke.
She yawned on the back of her hand again, coughed loudly,
and spat on the ground, next to her bare, cracked feet.
She continued cracking egusi with her teeth and throwing peelings
on the floor for the chickens to scramble and trample over.
She loved to hear the chickens quack, and the hens crow at her feet
while scratching the mud floor with tiny legs, hungrily searching
for food.
Nana Pak was the last to come out of her own house. She had
aged more than the other wives and used a walking stick to
support her limp body. She sat on the usual stool that had been
placed at her door by her husband Baba Ali.
She suffered from many maladies at old age. She was the
oldest of Baba’s wives. She wore a long green kaba that
covered her entire body and hid her frailty.
Overhead, hungry hawks hovered in the air, ready to pounce
on the chickens as the kids wildly chased them with stones and
sticks. But a fast hawk quickly preyed on one of the chickens
and flew off abruptly … the children screamed, cursed loudly,
and angrily, then threw more stones in the air to chase off the
merciless predator!
Ekudu, the fifteen year old son of Nana Efume quickly spots a
gang of rebel soldiers emerging from the corn field.
A black bandana tied on their necks tells all … they are ruthless
fellows.
The wild, unkempt soldiers hold guns pointing in the direction of
Baba Ali’s compound.
Terrified, Ekudu screams and runs into the house, beckoning the
little ones to follow him!
They run into the house of Baba Ali and hide.
The soldiers approach the lone compound in the vicinity hurriedly
in broad daylight!
With thick dry mud caked on black faces and green leaves covering
hostile, angry faces, the soldiers suddenly emerge before Baba Ali
still sitting under the baobab tree.
Three strong arms shove Baba Ali from his seat and hurl him in
the air. He falls down unconscious.
Will he survive?
Nana Mati, with broom still in hand, stands transfixed in the yard,
unable to move. A soldier points a gun in her face and screams
“drop da broom and take off your stinky wrappa or I go
shoot you now!” Nana Mati complies in fear. Six in a row, they
pounce on her like hungry lions devouring raw human flesh.
Nana Mati remains motionless!
Nana Pak sits still on the stool in front of her kitchen.
Tears roll down her eyes. She suddenly grabs her walking stick
fiercely, ready to strike as booted feet in green khaki uniform
approach her aggressively.
“Di one too old!” the soldiers yell and laugh mockingly.
They poke the gun in her face and she falls backwards on her stool,
lying motionless on the mud floor.
The soldiers see the egusi dumped at the entrance of another door.
They attempt to open the door but it is locked. They use the butt
of their guns to break down the plank wood and barge in yelling
and cursing furiously.
They see no one in the room but hear a familiar movement above
their heads. Two soldiers pull the ladder from the floor, lean it against
the mouth of the ceiling and quickly mount to the top.
Nana Efume and her daughter are lying flat on piles of fumed corn
drying on the banda. They shove both women roughly and drag
them to the floor, pointing the guns in their faces as they scream and
plead for their lives. One of the soldiers roughly pulls and tears Natiya’s
dress, revealing her busty breasts. Natiya is Nana Efume’s beautiful
eighteen year old daughter.
Natiya’s full luscious red lips and cat eyes in an oval chocolate brown
face, cause a stir among the unruly soldiers as they rush to grab her all
at once. A fight ensues and one of the soldiers grabs the screaming girl
by the arms and pulls her outside in a rush, while the others struggle to
knock each other down with heavy gun blows. The soldier drags the
frantic girl into the farm while she screams, and hurls insults to no
avail. They disappear in the maize field.
The other soldiers follow in despair, and on their way out,
Baba Ali who has now regained consciousness is hurdled under
the tree, whimpering and groaning in agony. A soldier points his
gun at him and bam!, Baba falls flat on his face.
A still calm envelopes the compound of Baba Ali;
An eerie silence consumes the atmosphere.
Baba Ali’s son Ekudu opens the door slightly and stares at
the rampage.
He rushes towards his dad and yells for help!
Chaos ensues as the children remain in the house, petrified.
These are the soldiers of Captain James Musigi;
They capture, they kill, and they take hostage beautiful women,
children and animals for bounty.
No rule of law here! No rule of law!
Now they take hostage from today’s brutal rampage four beautiful
women from Mbuta … one of them … the daughter of Baba Ali–
Baba Ali’s golden sunshine–Natiya!
Where are you Natiya? Where are you my daughter? the mother,
Nana Efume wails … she rubs her body on the dusty yard …
“Will I ever see my daughter again?” wuho! wuho! wuho!
The girls, the women, concubines of Jaminah, they never return,
once they climb the hills, they never come back!
Wuho! wuho! wuho! she laments….
“The victims are turned into child soldiers, then sex slaves-
who will rescue my daughter from the hands of the brute?”
Wuho! wuho! wuho! …
________________________________
The baobab tree located, within the peripheries of four
lone thatched huts; and a roofless shade for me and them …
That is where he found me …
That is today . . .
Under the baobab tree one late Saturday afternoon
sat Baba Ali in his compound, with a calabash of
palm-wine at his feet and a horn cup in his hand.
He sipped gently from his cup and beat the flies off
his scratchy dry legs.
He could not see now but he could hear.
He could hear the noise of teenagers playing soccer
in the nearby empty corn field; He could hear his wives
nana Mati and nana Efume pounding corn with a mortar
pistle under the baobab tree close to him.
He smiled and frowned.
Then he thought about his daughter Natiya … gone for good …
his heart filled with rage and pain. What could he do?
Where was she?–and his son–where was he?
The sudden noise of a motorcycle raising a thick cloud
of dust spiraling in the air can be heard in the distance.
Everyone in the compound except Baba Ali drop what
they are doing and rush out to the farm field.
The noise of an Okada is such a pleasant luxury for the
inhabitants of Mbuta who live with the everyday nuisance
of dust that envelopes the musky, dry air.
The noise means that a stranger from faraway is coming
home.
Ekudu the eldest son of Baba Ali jumps off the Okada
with a black suitcase in hand, looks up the skies, laughs in a
thunderous, carefree manner and opens his arms wide …
All the children fly into his arms like chickens fighting
for corn, screaming and yelling his name–
Ekudu le grand est revenu au village
Dieu merci; Qu’est que tu nous apportes du pays des blancs,
grand Ekudu?
Ekudu the big man has returned to the village, eh, thank God;
What have you brought for us from the white man’s
country grand Ekudu?
Colorful sun rays penetrating the leaves of the
baobab tree light up Baba Ali’s upright posture under
the baobab tree, the old man hears the footsteps of his son
approaching and stands up … he is overfilled with joy.
Ekudu, was back!
He sat under the baobab tree next to his dad
and told his old man stories, until the stars lighted up
the night sky and pushed the dark clouds behind the moon.
Yet to this day, Natiya was lost to them all. Lost to the brutality
of Jaminah’s rebel soldiers, and all these years, no news at all!
Still no law here!
No government here!
Yet, sitting under the baobab tree this moment, Baba Ali gazes
up the sky with a starry glitter in his open eyes; A glimmer of
hope surges and grips his weary emotions, as hands raised, he
sighs with some relief – for if he had lost a daughter then, under
the baobab tree, he had now found new strength under the boabab
tree, in a son who studied the white man’s law in Paris; A son who
was bent on taking matters into his own hands, for a daughter, a
sister lost … that was not the end yet, but a new beginning … a
new beginning … any hope for Natiya?
Maybe someday, … some day my son, …who knows?
For the government does not fight back, it does not do a thing
to trap the elusive gangsters; Year after year, the same story,
the same assaults, when will it end?
Why Africa? From the Congo, to Uganda, to Chad, to Nigeria,
to Somalia and all – why?
* My inspiration to write this poem is drawn from the story of an elusive Ugandan rebel leader, Joseph Rao Kony, who for decades has evaded capture. Joseph Kony is the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a guerrilla group that emerged in Uganda in the 1980s with the aim to topple Yoweri Museveni’s government. The consequences of his criminal activity are the abduction of innocent children who are turned into child rebel soldiers and child sex slaves. Only recently, the group, Invisible Children, Inc. released two “Kony 2012” videos to promote their “Stop Kony” movement. The videos went viral and were watched by millions of people around the world. The Ugandan government is yet to capture him. Joseph Kony is on the most wanted list of the International Criminal Court of Justice.
Eunice Ngongkum holds a PhD in African Literature from the University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon, where she teaches in the Department of African Literature and Civilizations. Her works include Manna of a Life Time and Other Stories (2007); short stories in The Spirit Machine and other New Short Stories from Cameroon (2008) and The Ngoh Kuoh Review (2011), as well as articles in national and international peer-reviewed journals.
GREEN SPIRIT
(In memory of Wangari Maathai)
Foremost flame of our unique earth
tree hugger Wangari Maathai
now gone one to be with the earth
you untiringly held fort for
I salute you ecowarrior!
Our forests you mothered, mother
from the Ngong Hills to the Congo
standing high our timber trees
in the face of grasping power.
Truth to tyranny oft you spoke
taking a chance on its irksome ire
undaunted, your green spirit swords crossed
with creepers of our biomass
bent on bleeding our bleeding boughs.
These you pasted with potent points
in conservation’s combat zone
earning well-earned crowns of glory
while staging forest views with verve.
Your superb shot shines still
firing us for the big time fight
safeguarding our neck of the woods
I salute you ecowarrior!
Mbuh Tennu Mbuh teaches in the English Department at University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon. A pioneer member of the Anglophone Cameroon Writers Association (ACWA) and a Fulbright and Commonwealth Scholar, Tennu holds a PhD from the University of Nottingham, UK. His works include two novels and a book of poems: In the Shadow of My Country (2009), The Death of Asobo-Ntsi (2011) and The Oracle of Tears (2010).
CHOPSTICK DIPLOMACY
Such dragon embraces
of a postcolonial scam that insult
the memory of a people under twenty-first century noon,
and our leaders soiling their sleek, designer lapels
at staged photo show of Beijing’s epicurean farce;
backward pedagogy and the glee
of new imperialism, our woe. We’ve survived, you may say,
on American crumbs from gilded table of the lucky
one percent in Wall Street paradise, but Beijing
preys even on the maggots from our pit latrines,
and shocks legendary Parisian greed for equatorial teats.
What blindness drags us along China’s blood-builded Wall then,
when her Old Guards rehearse Wall Street
superlatives but not as Democrat or Capitalist?
Confused Politburo landlords, seeding confusion into new enclaves,
and ours a juicy chunk, blind to imminent Beijing Bubble
because China’s new taste buds are conceptualised at Cambridge,
designed by General Motors, and served
in Disneyland elixir with reeded Coke at the manager’s Easter discount.
Tiananmen Square was a nursery, Beijing’s
dread and lie, and every tropical dictator’s April fool,
when the whitewash cannot fool her formatted billions forever,
because the Tank Man, O lone Warrior against the billion Red Guards,
dared the bloody bluff like a Robin Hood shoot sprouting
on Nottingham campuses in Chinaland.
We don’t need Beijing’s weevilled goodwill,
her doomed messianism not defined,
a forgery of ideology forging newer chains
and the prospection of blood and more blood
after Gorbachev’s feelers, ridiculed.
Castro tried but failed to conjure eternity in the shadow of a sickle and hammer,
because self-interest, even poorly nurtured, overwrites
glossy communal overtures patterned as brain-drilled
testaments of good faith for a neutered humanity;
so this hybrid pedagogy in political science
from Beijing’s coney-eyed pedagogues
makes me sick with funereal
prophecy in 2035.
Johnnie MacViban is a journalist who has worked with Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) and Cameroon Tribune. Some of his books include The Makuru Alternative (2001), A Ripple from Abakwa (2008), An Anecdoted Patchwork (2011) and The Mwalimu’s Reader (2011).
In the Temple of Porcus Omnivorus
(A tribute to hog eaters)
Once upon a ravenous hog feast
In that cozy confusion of a yearless mist;
Adepts in oneness flushed with noisy snort
Amid the clinking sound of drinking port.
The air fogged up with cream dazzle smoke
And smells attacked the nose in touchy strokes–
Sloven people, catholicity of appetite grew
The festival’s gluttony gripped the worshipping crew,
Winged diurnal music so praised the deity
In due time, enhancing the engrossing vain gaiety.
Porcus, forsaken among Mohammed’s Orientals
Pray Baal, they plucked it like petals:
Gabriel, beau regard, hear the many names
As hogo-crats orisoned, praising the swine fame
Revived ritual, revered in old Babylonian trace
Hail to the cult in exalted craze.
So, many oily tempest tongues licked on
Bruised bones cracked in rococo delight fun–
Waking eyes, look, here’s Nature’s fatty light
Epicurean excess in sacrificial rites!
Joyce Ashuntantang has a PhD in English from the City University of New York and is an Assistant Professor at Hillyer College, University of Hartford, CT. A performer, actress, and screenwriter, she is the Founder of EduArt, Inc. and the EduArt Awards for Cameroon Literature in English. Her many works include the film Potent Secrets, a poetry collection titled A Basket of Flaming Ashes (2010) and Landscaping Postcoloniality: The Dissemination of Cameroon Anglophone Literature (2009).
Jabulani–The World Cup Ball
A man is like a jabulani,* the world cup ball
In a woman’s arms he jerks in spasms.
Drowned in the moans of any vuvuzela**
He does “the Robert Green”*** and slips inside
Hard to contain, a Jabulani flies
To arms of fans in stands
Defying poise, skill and control
Or corner kicks from yearning hearts
It is not a question of referees
Or countless replays on a wide screen
Some women already know what Adidas knows
A jabulani is a jabulani
Even the best sometimes miss
After all, every net has its holes
* The official 2010 FIFA world cup ball heavily criticized for being too light weight and impossible to control.
** A plastic horn known for its bee-like noise made notorious in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
*** English Goalkeeper at the 2010 world cup. After a 1-0 England lead in a game against the USA, Green “spilled” a long-range shot from USA midfielder Clint Dempsey. The world watched in surprise as the ball bounced on and off Green’s gloves and rolled over the goal line. The match ended in a 1-1 draw. After this error Green was benched.
Dzekashu MacViban is the Founding Editor of Bakwa Magazine and the author of a poetry collection titled Scions of the Malcontent. His work is featured in The New Black Magazine, Fashizblack, ITCH, Bakwa, Palapala, The Sonora Review and forthcoming in Wasafiri and Jungle Jim.
The Cadaverous Troubadour
Of charlatans, he’s the crown
With jewels so fine, so rare–
There used to be a time when he spoke
Sense, maybe. But it matters little now
That his cellar is full of
Ghost writers, so to speak.
This fidelized Hilton-poet
(Schooled in the tradition of the griot)
Knows what to say, and when–
A product of the Ecole de Dissimulation
Of his kind, there’s no place
In Plato’s Republic
Rosalyn Mutia holds a PhD in Modern Letters from the University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon, where she is a Senior Lecturer. She has edited a forthcoming book on the prolific Cameroon writer and scholar, Bole Butake, titled “Membering Butake: Identity, Culture and Politics in Anglophone Cameroon Drama and Theatre.” Her poem “Ode to Feminist Criticism” is forthcoming in “Reflections: An Anthology of New Works by African Women Poets.”
Suicidal Silence
The nemesis of troubled childhood
Boiling through the cauldron
Of joyful revenge
The devastations of a forerunner
Of woman and feminist alertness
The austerity of suppressed ambition
The preponderance of highly illumined minds
The mystery, the poetry and the crypt
Of a precursor
The image and the voice
The coldness and wanton severity
The magic and daunt of a master
Sylvia Plath.
Honours student
Fulbright scholar
Instructor of Literature
Guka’a Williet has a Post Graduate Diploma in Social Security with specialization in Occupational Risk Management and Social Insurance Benefits. She is inspired by daily happenings as well as a desire to effect change in her society.
LUST
The attitude of lust
Lingers like particles of dust
Searching for gratification
In a life of no specification
Lust generates illicit desire
Pushing gently but steadily
To the trap so invisible
To be beheld by mortals
It moves in silence
Its chains are subtle
Once caught in its trap
It’s hard to break out
Lust is the chief
Of all great thieves
It robes you of destiny
Turns you to nonentity
The attitude of lust
Lingers like particles of dust
Dangerous as a virus
Is the stronghold of lust.