THEMED SECTION 2
POETRY

 

Black

 

 

Nkwana Joshua Serutle

University of South Africa. psjoshua.jn@gmail.com

 

 

every time someone passes on in the family

our elders command us to wear black clothes for the funeral

to mourn the corpse in the morning

to capture a memory of one of us in a coffin

to wear a feeling of a dead body inside a coffin

and when the coffin sinks

the choir hums hymns like deflated bodies

they remind us of emptiness and loneliness

of how to make a song live without a voice

of how to make a home inside a black hole

of how to stay strong within a quaking body

our elders command us not to shed tears

not to turn our bodies into tornadoes

I wish to tell them I'm cold enough to fit inside a grave

that I've been dead ever since the funeral announcement

that my body knows how breathless the grave is

I wish to tell them how dead I am

but I' m afraid to in debt their hearts with so much loss