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Joyce Chigiya Poem
Lamet!
is what she hears first
him, screaming her second name
as he descends upon her
no time to process
gravity
a thud, tearing her core to shavings
Maiweeeee! She is puzzled.
His baritone dropping the 'n'
agitation
a wooden scrabble.
Nothing is left between her
and Pee, not a grain
all’s crushed
smothering their screams
interlocking their groans.
He is a pawn, no saphead
giving it to her, a pounding
her splinters
putting him on like a glove
a blood-wood
fragments of his body all over her.
She, a Mortal
(he notes the ‘r’ replacement)
implodes in silence, his pain.
She is deep
no winnowing basket
Her pleas chaff going with the wind
consummating with eyes
but she, too dry to go gunky.
Left to recline in the tree shade, heaves
silent sighs among groundnut sheaves
“You know I l-o-v-e you,”
“Yet it spells p-a-i-n, right?”
“We are just pieces of a g-a-m-e dear,”
he sighs rolling onto his back.
Copyright © Joyce Chigiya | Year Posted 2021
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Joyce Chigiya Poem
Wifey (a duet)
If your love for me was as deep
as you always claim it is, then
you'd find me a lion's head.
To prove my love to you, sugar cane
for the feline I will gladly go hunting
my favourite subject! You will see...
What kind of man are you anyway,
to come dangling only one, just one?
Find me more or you are history.
Lower the heat, sweet potato, need to study the geography
or I may not find even an old lioness in Devuli Ranch
there is absolutely nothing I will not do to...
Humour me! You’re all flowers no fruit
It’s the toothless not the agile, bonehead
to feast on your chalk-dusted hair.
You seem to be conscious, honey comb
the hunting of game is no classroom game
but if you insist, I’ll make attempts at trying to...
I want more trophies for my exhibits
or else I will find a man who blinks art.
Your non-action verbs are not working.
This conversation grates, I’m done with your pugnacity.
Here is your head, last brick in the wall
I’ve vowed to myself, I'd sooner be dead than...
Get me another head, full stop!
You lazy, crazy ne'er-do-well!
Or else I'm going to... hii hi hii hi!
Copyright © Joyce Chigiya | Year Posted 2021
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Joyce Chigiya Poem
Monkey business
“I say how about
breakfast at The New Farmer’s”
Our day of picking and consuming done
no hunger induced nightmares, we rest dusk to dawn
check on the young ones. Are we all here?
tomorrow we return for another early breakfast
at The New Farmers'
it's sugar cane on the menu
well done, defoliated by fire
sweet smell of wild honey
a hive of flavours of molasses
wash down milky white green corn
we're going on tortoise-paced on fast food
centipedes, scorpions rocking our pillows
going green for the season, shedding the load off
Triangle's aged sugar mills
we have suffered enough, chums
in the hands of the farmer, old and new alike
globalising of our territories, present day terrorism
landmines all over
Were they seeding sweet potatoes?
Long rooted explosives have been going off
in the crossfire of war ghosts
sounds of corn popped in shovels
by rustic labourers for lunch
tearing our species limb from limb
we dare not bore deep into the woods for sustenance
Reap where they have sown!
Yeah!
They will see red, develop high BP
when we up our tails, march with a swag
Ho-me! Ho-me! Ho-me! Ho-me!
cobs, canes in snouts and armpits
Their sentinel will go round anthills like the looney canine
of the long-playing "His Master's Voice," ever so poised
for a jump, off the vinyl scratches, stuck in the groove
giving Chacma a bad name;
“Command field, roger
reporting marauding baboons
destroyed plots alpha to romeo
zeroing into zulu, roger
send delta oscar gulf sierra
over and out."
Copyright © Joyce Chigiya | Year Posted 2021
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Joyce Chigiya Poem
Walking in the rain
I am going out
in the gentle summer rain
remnants of a storm
to feel the drenched cotton fabric
of this threadbare shirt cling onto me like a sheath
smell the parched earth suck in the season’s first rain
Please come with me
We will paddle about, cautiously though
not to mash too many snails into the grazing lands
watch the muddy waters slide along the footpaths
where the scum of earth hangs temporarily on the grass
to be phased out with time
Yesterday’s swelter
that cooked up this serving in cumulonimbi pots
has been extinguished, savour the coolness
as I indulge myself in the sweet brutality
of the pure rain, breaking a taboo
sogging my dreadlocks in a wash that’s true
through and through
but if a stray bolt of lightning strikes
and the ensuing thunder vibrates under my feet
I will stand petrified, vulnerable as a wounded calf
with a pounding heart, I will mouth an uncensored prayer
I need someone then to stand right by me.
Would you feel used, if that someone was you?
Copyright © Joyce Chigiya | Year Posted 2021
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Joyce Chigiya Poem
Microlight
When they appeared, we were like, “What …the?” motorcycles
dangling from multi-coloured wings, animated comic book scene
blond wisps racing at leisure in deliberate mid-morning breeze
rainbow spectrum gone haywire, in the azure June sky
they were flaunting metallics, Kariba breams in fish eagle talons.
They hovered above, the whole school was set in a frenzy
nerds set books aside, watched in awe, tree-hoppers
gnawing into altitude like Superman, zooming in to land
ZAKA AIRSTRIP from Buffalo Range Aerodrome passing
through Eaglemont, dodging murk from the hosts.
The first time Gogo had seen the sun being made to shrivel
like a berry in the sun by something audible was back
in ‘the year of grasshoppers’, a great swarm had turned
the high solar heat to warm by a massive green curtain
that came down to roost with a whirr, a body, onto a village
of keen locust eaters, leaving skeletal contents for the silo
a celebratory mood took over, there was nothing fishy here
she undid her floral *zambia swirling, bringing it down
dust was confetti showers rewinding. Gogo ululated
blissful as a bride, took to a prance, a new kind of dance
round and round her third leg. Wakanda? A vibranium-like rod
It was raining men!
Airmen!
Copyright © Joyce Chigiya | Year Posted 2021
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Joyce Chigiya Poem
Cellphone monologue
I’ve been driving, you know the road is no highway,
how taxing, skirting potholes, cajoling the new jalopy
will be there for a candle lit supper, come what may.
Out of the glare, jacarandas form a fragrant canopy
into the glow of passion driving down Love Boulevard
Oh my, your texts been erecting toll gates between us!
I need money to get through to you, road is barred.
Do you honestly believe I deserve to be treated thus?
Sometimes a man has to make do with his love ration.
But the once-sweet ferments, then love loses a mate
when the woman darts in and out for material fashion
though she knows full well her lover is no Bill Gates.
Hard to believe we used to be such a rhyming couple
my said inadequacy has made me reel under the rubble.
Copyright © Joyce Chigiya | Year Posted 2021
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