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Category: Poetry

She is me

Published by Ilva Pieterse on 8 March, 2009

She is free
She lives her life as a book with intricate pages
I can smell them on her. I smell books on my mother. She reeks of their shrieking, pongs of their pulsing.

I cry her a book
With my tears, I mold a wet life for us
My mother makes me cry because she is in me
When I whisper, her eyes close
When she whispers, I become still.

Mother, when I was small, you had broad arms and strong wrists for me
You still carry me in a variety of ways.

Now, I want to carry you – your body, your heart, your soul
I will make myself so strong that I can carry it all – on my back, with my arms, inside my mouth

The day you placed me outside of you, I never wanted to let go.
I pulled, you pushed.
You pulled and I pushed.

The friction caused a dictionary.
And we rewrote our souls. Our soul twins.

I’ll never let you go, wherever you are…

Where is the child?

Published by Ilva Pieterse on 29 December, 2008

There is a little girl with a marble torch that shines nothing but the colour she is made of. And the strings, like that of a marionette that keep her alive – and moving – are attached to the hand of one she does not recognise. Little puppet, little puppet, lick my skin.

Faulty fingers molest her moving. And she becomes bright – like something unrecognisable to God. And she twists her hips in longing, in revolt, to a moth that is drawn to her and refuses to die. She slaps her skin, reddens the blue to create a purple so devoid of anything, she lacks the strength to cry. She lacks the will to breathe.

My body is an alligator. Mirrors detest me. Men’s eyes pest me. And every time I blink I am a little less of what I was before. And a little more of what I could’ve been.