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Guest Blog: A Poem by Nkateko Masinga

6 January 2016/in Tuesday Poetry

I wonder if leaving home made me this way   

I am childless and wondering if I should raise my children here,
or even have them at all
if they will grow up wishing their skin was disposable;
with a label that reads:
“to be peeled off when blackness becomes too heavy.
caution: This world needs you to be lighter
than the brown you inherited from the soil back home
and the luggage you left behind when escaping the war.”

In art class I was taught
that brown is a mixture of
red (for the blood of those who died on their way here)
yellow (for the sun that also shines on those we left behind)
& blue (for the sky we all raise our eyes to).


In art class I was taught
that my body is
death,
sunshine
& prayer.

I am preparing for motherhood in this new home
that calls me foreigner;
my mother a refugee
my sister an asylum seeker
my uncle an illegal immigrant.
But my children will be called
beautiful;
with skin like mahogany,
like wooden floorboards creaking beneath their mother’s feet before the war sent her running
and running
and running.

___________

Nkateko Masinga is the author of The Sin In My Blackness.

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https://damiajayi.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Dami-Ajayi-Logo-WT.png 0 0 Dami Ajayi https://damiajayi.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Dami-Ajayi-Logo-WT.png Dami Ajayi2016-01-06 08:56:552016-01-06 08:56:55Guest Blog: A Poem by Nkateko Masinga
1 reply
  1. Owiredu
    Owiredu says:
    6 January 2016 at 9:00 am

    Reblogged this on Musings .

    Reply

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Dami Ajayi

DAMI AJAYI

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Dami Ajayi finds a way to fuse being a writer into his busy doctor schedule. Known as Jolly Papa (JP for short) by his friends—a sobriquet he took from a song by Rex Lawson—the poet cum doctor cum music critic makes seamless transitions between these orbits around which his life rotates.

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