Cremation of the Scarecrow

By Dzikamayi Chando

Dzikamayi Chando was born and raised in Gweru, Zimbabwe. Some of his works appear in several online literary publications and Cremation of the Scarecrow is his debut collection.

'Cremation of the Scarecrow is an impressively diverse and generous collecti

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carnelian Heart Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Feb 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781914287183

Book preview

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by:

Carnelian Heart Publishing Ltd

Suite A

82 James Carter Road

Mildenhall

Suffolk

IP28 7DE

UK

www.carnelianheartpublishing.co.uk

©Dzikamayi Chando 2022

Paperback ISBN 978-1-914287-17-6

Ebook ISBN 978-1-914287-18-3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.

Editor: Samantha Rumbidzai Vazhure

Cover design:

Artwork - Joanna Swan

Interior:

Typeset by Carnelian Heart Publishing Ltd

Layout and formatting by DanTs Media

Table of Contents

Editor’s note

Before Your Government Kills You

Excursus

Choking on Bread

The Reading

Prophecy

Gaslighting the Alchemist

Rebirth of the Melanin Man

This is What My Father Meant When He said Nothing

Asymmetrical

Sunsets

Water Filling Over Bones

Defragmentation

Bootlegging a Sunset

Old Gates

A Man Can Never Have Too Many White Shirts

Silence, Among Other Scourges

Entropy

Addiction

Cold Butterfly

Abdication

Misdiagnosis

Hauteng

Pendulous

Dementing Daisy

Coordinates of the First Republic

Shibboleth

Abdication Also Known As Addiction

Inventory of Hearts

Supplemental Inventory of Hearts

Half Human/ Half Nothing

The Music Stays

Syncopated Township Blues

Icebox

The Cracks in This House Look Like Mouths

Anthill

The Bad Debtor and the Debt Collector

There's Something You're Not Telling Me

Another Country

Cremains of Our Prayers

Glow

The Resurrectionist’s Afterglow

Old April

Little Hills in Old April

Cults

Delirium Tremens

The Sun Runs Late

When God was Still Young

The Inventor

Spark

Coal Sky/Test Tube Poem

My Mouth is a Mother Gifting Crayons to Cherubs

Rats Drunk on Self-Hatred are Looking for Traps to Tend To (Cults 4:1)

Winds & Ancestors

The History of Betrayal

Excursus

An Uncommissioned Study of Flags

On Sighting the Pioneer Column

Congo

A Spin-off of a Story Never Told

Pigeonholing

To Learn Not to Breathe

Street Auction

Another Lifetime As Seen From This Lifetime

Chemo

I Used to Think Death was a Woman

Even Knives Have Skins Too

November is a Mountain

Child

Where I Come From, It's Far From Home

It's About Time Sally Brought My Medicine

Graves

My Grandfather's Calling

Excursus

Car Breaker

An Obsession With Everything

Foreword

Cremation of the Scarecrow

A New Prescription

Nehanda

Excursus

On Listening To Peter Tosh's Guitar Solo on ‘Stir It Up’

Fly

Womb of the Words

Other Poems

Excursus

Kismet

Sanity's Not a Souvenir You Can Bring Back From That Place

The Gospeler of Happily Ever Afters

A Note on the Text

Editor’s note

Having seen Chando’s individual poems in various literary publications, I arranged to speak with him about publishing a collection. When he divulged he had been nurturing respective works, I was only delighted to invite him to submit a full manuscript. I knew when he entrusted ‘Cremation of the Scarecrow’ to me that I was in for a treat. Chando is a lyrical genius; a reality that only made Carnelian Heart’s decision to acquire his debut collection a foregone conclusion.

Cremation of the Scarecrow is an impressively diverse and generous collection that talks to the truths of blackness, the ghetto experience and plight of poverty, unemployment and drug abuse, dilemma of immigration, identity crisis and discovery of self, depression and death, love and hope, to name but a few. Chando’s metaphoric luminosity offers invasively honest perspectives of life as he sees it:

"We are lustful angels only here for a one night

stand with death, we catch gold fever

and comb the dust for death

leaping into gloomy mirrors like ghosts

muddled by their own darkness." (Gaslighting the

Alchemist)

Chando’s employment of auditory, tactile and visual imagery is second to none. His voice, often ethereal, carries messages transcending lifetimes and realms to deliver powerful instructive memoranda to the unenlightened juvenile and imprudent, the prejudiced gatekeepers, power-hungry fascist dictators and so forth:

"This poetry is prophecy of my ancestor's bones

falling from his hands like rinsed meteorites

spilling out of the nomenclator's mouth

his bellow bursting into a trance vibrating

in my veins five centuries later…

This poetry is DNA— a preserved message

on the cusp of a falling sky, a failing realm." (The Reading)

Refreshingly,