Two Poems

Hottentot Venus – Sarah Baartman 

“Nature is a temple, where the living pillars sometimes utter indistinguishable words. 

Man passes through these forests of symbols which regard him with familiar looks.”

Baudelaire – CORRESPONDENCE

There is a leash plagued with fancy, enough to dog a negro round the continent.

this one comes to England of her own naked will—

& did so, bent like a cartwheel, crawling half the journey.

 body, wrecked by the weight of steatopygia. 

the excess suddenness of fat, collecting on the heap of day that unfolds in gallops.

a trader bargains for custody, dangles a large bag of coins at her,

& she inks a lifetime signature on his contract: to display the meat of her skin in stables.

a show-horse in cage, leaping at the barking orders of her animal trainer.

the caesura of her feet, dragging a line on stage till it breaks, mid-tempo.

she thumps at her chest with the rustic hit of a female bushman, 

doing the savage dance of Africa.

the audience are invited to touch, but from a distance.

as though, the thin line between reality and performance is consent enough.

there is a state of mind in art that takes pleasure in being moved—

in ways that makes one complicit to humiliation, mistaking her punishment for pleasure.

I, too am in the theatre of my own objectification, fondled into rage,

being touched by the same white hands, tape-measuring my passport

in the way they reached for the privacy of Sarah Baartman’s bosom,

till she grabbed a Briton by the balls 

& stormed out naked on the street that covered her in dark umbra.

the men sneak her body to distance towns, selling out shows & STI the 18th century style.

once she goes down on all four, the queens take turns in making a cartwheel of her back.

they rode her to death, smoke belting out from her fallen lungs.

in the black quiet of night, she is sold in shrouds to sculptors

who limes her in liquid resin, cast her frame in bronze 

& placed it in a museum for the highest bidder.

aren’t you in shock like me, dear reader, 

that even in death, an image still returns more money than the country’s revenue

& do it, fatigued & breathless still.

the government sends back her remains to Cape Town, on Mandela’s demand.

I am in negotiation of my own body’s return to my homeland.

what is the cost value of my immigrant stay here say, after tax?

what lunatics me, if not this literature that bends my back in reverse sportsmanship.

I refuse on smoke & whiskey to live past this ache.

in a dream, clay pours on the edge of my lying body, dried on the spot

& I stood up to use—leaving a monument for the ethereal world.

my presence, hung there in display like an over-worn jacket.

sand stacked like cuboid, resting on both of my breasts.

I wonder if I’m inciting yet another metaphor for being trespassed without consent, 

considering my nakedness here.

a girl passes by and disregards me with unfamiliar hatred:

you/ actor by pretense. you/ animal in a cage, exposing yourself, being touched.

God is Afro African 

What a lifetime you’ve lived in need of oil, to glow brilliant as a healthy black strand.

black as I am, there is a probability I’d run out of melanin that lubes this body to a swallow.

once, a friend mentioned stain, & I stand up to the blemish.

we riot in the angst—to the pulling of hair,

in same way we oil back, slippery as empathy.

a comb too, is a mediator in practice plastic, 

the way it runs its hand on the scalp of a conflict to have us bald with calmness.

one strand of me is a mohawk, spiky-out for a fight.

my self-defense of porcupine gesture.

your insistence on calling it Afro African, a way to beg the terror afresh.

I go head-first into a mall & the style announces me in a standstill.

the black girl on the counter, peeping at her skin as if a reward.

I once got a hair wash that foams so well into my own rage,

I had to water it down with oil.

wisdom is the first form of lubricant:

as if I parable the five virgins in the Bible for their lack of ointment.

the delay catches like fire on God’s hair—

a shaving of bleak light, before the cry of lamp burns out to a stranded wick.

something pontifies on the altar of me, wanting to teach a history of clean cuts:

God is Afro African worn in style.

a small delay on the side, coming full on you as if a bridegroom.

I, a wise bride, virgin at hair.

you, at the mercy of oil & its hot finishing.

you will kneel a begging & I won’t dim my lamp for you.

oil is what holds us to his calling. 

I preach the petroleum everywhere, when I want to be petty.

hold your lamp, while I play messiah.

see, your liquid drying the substance of its life,

blackened up to its globe even before the watchnight is done.

we religion in oil, black boy vigilantes.

I shone a torch on these letters & they glow eye-bright in their wake,

guarding each neighboring word stalked by a white space. 

in the end, we undo each other: black words, scrawled across white space.

delete the white space & meaning is overwrought.

delete the black word & emptiness stares you white in the face, like a godless bride.