Some Stuff About Things

To the men who raped my sister and left her body in rags next to the highway To the uncle who molested my best friend and still came to family holidays To the ex-lover who assaulted me one drunken night and defended himself by stating where he had previously been allowed to touch To the man who sodomized an 8-year-old boy and left his broken body next to the footpath for the other children to find on their way to school To  all South African sex offenders  and those not even on this list We fight so that one day protecting your identity will be less important than protecting your victims.

"Graduation" is another poem by Koleka Putuma from her anthology Collective Amnesia . This poem deals with growing up and "graduating" from life as a black, queer womxn. Putuma describes this "graduation" leaving your parents' nest. It is a statement, something that WILL happen at one point or another. Because this is framed as a factual statement, the rest can also be interpreted as stated facts. These facts of "graduating" includes realizing that traditions from the speaker's childhood do not fit her own, personal narrative, the speaker is expected to support her family financially, but it is not always possible as she is trying to build her own life. This act of contributing financially will earn her the title of "adult" in the family. But this title is false. The speaker "slips into old roles". She hides things she does not want them to see or know, perhaps her sexuality as they may not be accepting of it. Wh...

how does the sea remember me. every time. - Nayyirah Waheed The sea... The word conjures up images of relaxation and cleansing. Nayyirah Waheed's poem seems little more than the perfect Instagram photo caption. But after reading and analysing "Water" by Koleka Putuma your viewpoint of those words might change. Waheed's poem can thus be read in conversation with that of Putuma's and considering they are both womxn of colour the themes and what the poems speak to, overlap. In her poem "Water" Putuma relates what the sea means to her as a queer womxn of colour. The speaker in the poem starts by telling how fun it was to go to the sea when she was a child "to giggle, to splash in our black tights/ and Shoprite plastic bags wrapped around our new weaves". The speaker continues to tell how black people are often mocked for the way they wipe the water from their face when they exit the water. This is indicative of the young child in the f...

I must revel in this loneliness for I have forgotten who I           singularly am - to become me