When the sun came back/ I was a full tree/with all the room in the desert to grow,

I hope when they take my picture/I am filtered with bright exposure

The sun shone brightly as if the ancestors themselves smiled upon the day.

Stigmata on his hands/ a needle in his vein

When the Black man ruled this land, things were very different. You see, me, I’m the brother of the wind; I am the altered destiny.’

The Quality of Mercy is one of the finest books from Africa, and with it, Siphiwe has positioned herself as an important [African] writer

A small portion of your wings / Housefly, lies here before my eyes.

Here eats young and old.

As soon as the smoke dispersed, a gorgeous woman with glowing dark skin was standing there.

We become our parents’ dreams. / We must now find a way to be free.

Maybe these streets swallow us whole

She sighed. “Everything grows here,” she said, pulling out more weeds. “If it’s strong, it lives. If not, then it dies.”

She leaped from her window and became a swarm of bats.

Last night, she came into the world of my dreams and rocked it upside down. She was all of splendour and beauty.

You hum the words of the poem again and again to the boy, smoothing his hair over and over as you do so. Already, you know that there is no more sleep tonight. You know this is where you will lie till the sun shines through those dancing curtains.

and the girls all carry something common in their dirge/

These men all knelt between their thighs.

The first time I saw the devil, I was four and didn’t quite make sense of what I saw. The second time I saw him, I was a year older and more articulate, but it was only for a fleeting second.

I wonder what you think of how I look at you. How my hands linger when I touch you. I sometimes wish you’ll fall into my hands in total surrender, just like the cashew fruit.

We’ve seen it all, really. Yet, we still fall into the trap of a single story—every single time. We still think that we are either this or that; we can’t be both; we can’t be everything all at once.

The guard whispers to his colleague in a tongue I’m too familiar with, the one whitened with otherness