The Alkalinity of Bottled Water

By Makhosazana Xaba

Makhosazana Xaba, with several collections and anthologies to her name, is at the forefront of a poetry that embraces penetrating socio-political insight with highly emotional responses to the love and pain that our country provides in such abundance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Botsotso Publishing
• Release date: Sep 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781990922244

Makhosazana Xaba

MAKHOSAZANA XABA is the author of two poetry collections: these hands (2005) and, Tongues of their Mothers (2008). Her poetry has been anthologized widely, translated into Italian, Mandarin and Turkish and also available from the Cambridge Poetry Archive. She is the editor of, Like the untouchable wind: An anthology of poems (2016). Her collection of collection of fiction, Running & other stories (2013), won the SALA Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award in 2014. Her short story "Running" won the Deon Hofmeyr Prize for Creative Writing in 2005 and was anthologised in, 20 Best Short Stories of South Africa's Democracy, in 2014. She has co-edited three anthologies; Proudly Malawian: Life Stories from lesbian and gender-nonconforming individuals (2016) and Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction (2013) which won the 26th Lambda Literary Award for the fiction anthology category in 2014 and was translated in Spanish in the same year. In 2017, Queer Africa 2: New Fiction is coming out. Xaba holds an MA in Writing (with distinction) from The University of the Witwatersrand.

Book preview

Published by Botsotso in 2019

Box 30952

Braamfontein 2017

[e-mail]

www.botsotso.org.za

ISBN 978-0-9947081-6-8

The poems©Makhosazana Xaba

Editor: Allan Kolski Horwitz

Layout, design and cover: Vivienne Preston

Tomorrow awaits our awakening.

The reconstructed us.

The self-conscious collective.

The responsible & inspired us.

Tomorrow will not abandon us.

Contents

Part 1

When laughter hurts

The nation was preoccupied

These four words

Goodbye my lake

The alkalinity of bottled water

The sky agrees

Tentacles

The phantom shebeen

That weekend in December

The storytelling jug

Ten years later

Home address

Twenty-one houses

The 2016 Coffin

Forget about apartheid?

Friends?

Our hill

Part 2

Welcome

Speaking of hearts

Like this horse

Touch

To be Young, Lesbian and Black

Chasing

It shouldn’t matter

Dance with me

Counting trees in July

My jazz

The muffin-top moon

Not yet Uhuru

At the Cumin and Coriander restaurant

This

Lunch

No, never

Meeting point

Isisu somhambi asingakanani, singangenso yenyoni

Conscience

Part 3

Unfurling of the self

Margins

My name is Gentle fingers

Black beret

After the jazz

Opening up like that

Mynahs and raindrops

This pain

Jacarandas

Chosen markings

Three women

Paint brushes

Secure in comfort

The flow of fingers

We have found a home for your cats

Sorting

Until you return

In your silence

When laughter hurts

When laughter hurts, something breaks

Pieces fly in the air, cutting into anything and anyone

On their corridor of flight

But somewhere, some bleed

When laughter hurts and some bleed

The smell of fresh blood nauseates

Though others bleed in solidarity

Despite the choke, despite the vomit

When laughter hurts and others vomit

Contamination spreads

The atmosphere turns foul

And so, in time, we marinate in the affliction

The nation was preoccupied

How shall we remember this time, when

the nation was preoccupied with one man’s appointments?

How shall we remember this time, when

the nation was preoccupied with one man’s charges?

How shall we remember this time, when

the nation was preoccupied with one man’s home?

How shall we remember this time, when

the nation was preoccupied with one man’s laughter?

How shall we remember this time, when

The nation was preoccupied with one man’s penis?

These four words

It is time to go to bed so I must summon stillness,

silence the voices, erase the visuals, concentrate.

But first, I will