Poems Rethabile Likes

There is music by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes There is music by Rethabile Masilo in old men's hands, when sounds together come to crush the caesura, like an old photograph torn years ago and now wanting its memory back, a dermis stretching to help scar the cut just like goat skins over drums in Africa, music yet to be born until then, born the way he filled that bar with it, a stream of altos that had suddenly entered the hall together. Low flying. But what had that music to do with us to require all of this? For afterwards, his fingers flew, or seemed to fly, surprising every key in its sleep with a kis...

Raising things by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes Raising things by Rethabile Masilo As evening settles its dark wing on us we lie inside another night till even that night has nothing to say to us, till the crickets are quiet outside and bats are out, piercing night with their radar. There is no sound other than that of hooves as the devil goes by, on an evening stroll with his family. This happens night after night in these suburbs where evil likes to walk. I live in Qoaling. It is my home. One night the devil and his family didn't clop by as usual, they smashed our door down and trotted in, pierced Motlatsi's l...

Where the Grass is Warm by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes Where the Grass is Warm by Rethabile Masilo I walk to where the grass is warm; you have words that move to close each gap within; we talk about old times, and suddenly I say: here's a face, a good place you can turn to, it is yours and you may keep it if you will, and I hand you myself as a young man who adored you, before they slew you— the time we played morabaraba on the flat boulder above our home in Qoaling—that house now trembles when it's approached, like a child beaten into submission for years who sees a face that resembles its sex maste...

My Mother Says She Sees Him by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes My Mother Says She Sees Him by Rethabile Masilo She said… I see him outside in that area beyond the house. It must have been the yellow in her eyes. She has had time since he left to scrub them into clear marbles, and allow saltwater to rinse them, but the yellow has stayed, like rust on an abandoned freshwater pipe. When we were young, she would see into our childish dreams with them, in the unforgiving dark. He stands there bent at the waist, refusing to crack or to break, and she describes his teeth, clenched like a beast holds...