Water by Koleka Putuma

Water

The memory of going to the beach every New Year’s eve

Is one I share with cousins and most people raised black

How the elders would forbid us from going in too deep

To giggle, to splash in our black tights and Shoprite plastic bags wrapped around our new weaves, forbid us from riding the wave,

For fear that we would be a mass of blackness swept by the tide

And never to return

Like litter.

The elders forbid us as if the ocean has food poisoning

I often wonder why I feel as if I am drowning every time I look out into the sea

This and feeling incredibly small

And I often hear this joke

About Black people not being able to swim,

Or being scared of water;

We are mocked

And we have often mocked ourselves

For wiping our faces the way that we do when we come out of the water-

Compare it to how they do it all bay-watch like

And how we so ratchet-like with our postures and kink.

Yet every time our skin goes under

It’s as if the reeds remember that they were once chains

And the water, restless, wishes it could spew all of the slaves and ships onto shore

Whole as they had boarded, sailed and sunk

Their tears are what have turned the ocean salty,

This is why our irises burn every time we go under.

Every December sixteenth, December 24th and December 31st

Our skin re-traumatises the sea

They mock us

For not being able to throw ourselves into something that was instrumental in trying to execute our extinction.

For you, the ocean is for surf boards, boats and tans

And all the cool stuff you do under there in your bathing suits and goggles

But we, we have come to be baptised here

We have come to stir the other world here

We have come to cleanse ourselves here

We have come to connect our living to the dead here

Our respect for water is what you have termed fear

The audacity to trade and murder us over water

Then mock us for being scared of it

The audacity to arrive by water and invade us

If this land was really yours, then resurrect the bones of the colonisers and use them as a compass

Then quit using black bodies as tour guides or the site for your authentic African experience

Are we not tired of dancing for you?

Gyrating and singing on cue

Are we not tired of gathering as a mass of blackness?

To atone for just being here

To beg God to save us from a war we never started

To March for a cause caused by the intolerance for our existence

Raise our hands so we don’t get shot

Raise our hands in church to pray for protection

And we still get shot there too

With our hands raised

Invasion comes naturally for your people

So you have come to rob us of our places of worship too

Come to murder us in prisons too

That is not new either

Too many white people out here acting God

Too many white people out here doing the work of God,

And this God of theirs has my tummy in knots

Him and I have always had a complicated relationship

This blue eyed and blond haired Jesus I followed in Sunday school

Has had my kind bowing to a white and patriarchal heaven

Bowing to a Christ, his son, and 12 disciples

For all we know

the disciples could have been queer, the holy trinity some weird twisted love triangle

And the Holy Ghost transgender

But you will only choose to understand the scriptures that suit your agenda

You have taken the liberty to colonise the concept of God

Gave god a gender, a skin colour and a name in a language we had to twist our mouths around

Blasphemy is wrapping Slavery in the Gospel and calling it freedom

Blasphemy is having to watch my kind use the same gospel to enslave each other

Since the days of Elijah We have been engineered kneel to whiteness

And we are not even sure if the days of Elijah even existed

Because whoever wrote the bible did not include us

But I would rather exist in that god-less holy book than in the history books that did not tell truth

About us

For us

On behalf of us

If you really had to write our stories

Then you ought to have done it in our mother’s tongues

The ones you cut off when you fed them a new language

We never consent

Yet we are asked to dine with the oppressors

And Serve them forgiveness

How, when the only ingredients I have are grief and rage

Another one (who looks like me) died today

Another one (who looks like me) was murdered today

May that be the conversation at the table

And we can all thereafter wash this bitter meal with amnesia

And go for a swim after that

Just for fun.

Just for fun.

Koleka Putuma

Koleka Putuma is an award-winning South African poet, playwright and theatre director. Her bestselling debut collection of poems, Collective Amnesia (2017), has taken the South African literary scene by storm and is in its ninth print run. 

Black Joy by Koleka Putuma

BLACK JOY

We were spanked for each other’s sins.
Spanked in syllables and by the word of God.
Before dark meant home time.

My grandmother’s mattress
knew each of my
siblings,
cousins,
and the neighbour’s children’s
morning breath
By name.

A single mattress spread on the floor was enough for all of us.

Bread slices were buttered with iRama
and rolled into sausage shapes;
we had it with black rooibos, we did not ask for cheese.

We were filled.

My cousins and I would gather around one large bowl of umngqusho,
each with their own spoon.
Sugar water completed the meal.

We were home and whole.

But
isn’t funny?
That when they ask about black childhood,
all they are interested in is our pain,
as if the joy-parts were accidental.

I write love poems, too,
but
you only want to see my mouth torn open in protest,
as if my mouth were a wound
with pus and gangrene
for joy.

Koleka Putuma

Koleka Putuma is an award-winning poet, playwright and theatre director. Her bestselling debut collection of poems, Collective Amnesia (2017), has taken the South African literary scene by storm and is in its ninth print run. 

Every / Three Hours by Koleka Putuma

EVERY / THREE HOURS

this country buries us before we are born.
calls us by our obituaries before it calls us by our names.

makes us.
womxn with nervous conditions.
nervous conditions with their guard up.
law enforcement with a broken system.
a broken system with too much power.
power in authority with guns that gun down their spouses.

telephones with missing person details.
missing person details with no follow up.
garages with toddlers who should be in school.
vehicles with evidence.
evidence with no power to prosecute.
post offices with weapons.
shopping malls with kidnappers.
bathrooms with carnage.

a carnage with no expiry date.
clubs with druggers.
alleyways with not enough light.
and. even. with.
all the light. you would still not be safe.
ubers with panic.
taxify with paranoia.
walks with tasers. in groups. in public.
in places you wouldn’t think it could happen.

graves with girls.
taken too soon.
too brutal.
too horrifying to name.
to document. to find.
to mark as danger zones.
danger zones disguised as safe spaces.
safe spaces with murderers.
murderers who are husband material.
schools with paedophiles.
paedophiles with degrees in working with children.
lecture halls with molesters.
terminals with predators.
construction sites with men old enough to understand ‘NO!’
churches with men who use your prayers for safety to get you on your knees
with your arms raised.

[every 3 hours, one of us does not make it]

this country hangs our dignity at half-mast.
waves our bodies as lessons to be learnt.
as moments that should teach us something.
as modules. tests. experiments.

my existence is not for your teaching
to dislocate my mother’s throat six feet under
and compensate her grief with scholarships and amended policies.
policies that have gathered dust before they have even been drafted.

this country buries us before we are born.
calls us by our obituaries before it calls us
by our names.

Koleka Putuma

Koleka Putuma is an award-winning poet, playwright and theatre director. Her bestselling debut collection of poems, Collective Amnesia (2017), has taken the South African literary scene by storm and is in its ninth print run.