Child’s Play (When My Sekuru Died)
I didn’t attend the mariro
but I hear a choir of angels
sang his favourite hymns.
They say even God themself flew
down to share their condolences
after the music was done.
We were left home alone -
with thirtysomething dollars,
a fridge full of food. So we celebrated!
First, throwing unpopped corn at each other
to skid
across the living room floor
Dressed in all of our mother’s clothes -
my only brother a vision in red lipstick.
Invited friends round. Songs rang into the night -
sharing of stories & blankets. We built a fire
in the garden. It almost felt like I was there
on the first day of mourning.
As though I had also been wrapped in scarlet cloth
like my cousins on my mother’s side
who are really my mothers and uncles.
As though I had been there
to sing in that choir of angels
whose song lifted my grandfather,
a preacher, to a Godless heaven.
Waxing Hardy for Mixtape 4 Zimbabwe
The night: he stretches before you
like a slow river. Calm
on the surface; hardworking underneath.
You ask him all the right questions
to get the right answers.
Is a zebra a horse
or your mother’s clan totem
the first place you ever considered home.
Where the moon
does not linger - she only gets
28 days to come back where she started.
You are far
from home. You are far.
May you feel the spirit of a foremother
fighting
to grab a small piece of your attention
each morning before sunrise means
May you feel hope again meaning
you never left thinking it would be this long
till you returned, meaning...
May you be filled
with something like Nehanda’s spirit -
that great foremother
whose hardy bones rose more than once,
in the valley
of Dande. May you carry on, back, towards the land
of your ancestors.
Feel that spirit fighting
to grab a small piece of your attention
each morning - in the hour before sunrise.
When it’s her time,
to get full in her cycle,
the moon brings you:
fuller hips, breasts
a deeper voice & paranoia
that you will die alone
in the land of your coloniser.
Child of the soil. You say send me back
into the earth so I can come back hardy
as coneflower, hardy as lily of the valley
but you are stuck inside yourself.
Dressed up with only downstairs to go
matching the white walls.
The sunny streets outside, deserted; with envy
you watch the trees sway to themselves,
full of birdsong - present in their roots.
The moon does not linger for she only gets 28 days
to come back where she started
Runyengetero
after Momtaza Mehri’s ‘Glory Be to the Gang Gang Gang’
Praise be to all that is tender; early morning prayer!
Waking from mares; eyes still closed in relieved prayer
In praise of falling into the day, cracking of joints
& the most high for this qaafiya, this refrain, this prayer
Praise be to that old cliche of feeling small
next to a body of water headed elsewhere. Is that not prayer?
Praise be the horizon, how it can go on & on
& on just like my mother’s daily 5am prayer
for her children's right to leave their home
& make it back alive - to avoid prayer
under a last breath. The water in my eyes
in praise of all that is tender. My prayer
is to see how far I can stretch
on nothing but prayer
and the water in my eyes. Salty
memories left in the sea, the sand - a prayer
prayed with no regard for the answer.
Give us the right words so the prayer
rings exactly how it should because grace is precise,
favour wields a straight arrow & mercy comes from prayer
Belinda Zhawi is a Zimbabwean born writer, sound artist & educator. She is the author of Small Inheritances (ignitionpress, 2018) & co-founder of literary arts platform BORN::FREE. Belinda experiments with sound as MA.MOYO, & heavily collaborates within the ever growing South-East London jazz & beat-making scene. She’s been featured on various platforms including Boiler Room, BBC Radio, & Worldwide FM.
