They Have Killed Sizakele
By Jessica Horn
- Where is she
- in this land of crushed stone?
- Where is she
- as morning dresses the day
- in the dirtied lace of tired gospels
- Where is she
- our sister Sizakele
- in this brittle dawn?
- White powdered faces
- ululate against an unremarkable sky
- as bullets tip the minute hand
- …one, two, three…
- collarbones crumble
- …four, five, six…
- Here where sun chases starlight
- here in heartbreak’s wilderness
- here she is
- embroidering morning dew
- beading our memories
- in the red and rainbows of militancy
- Here in this theatre of slaughter
- she is clearing a round of clay earth
- intoning a litany
- calling for a witness
- You say: it is not our tradition
- She says: is this your tradition
- to rip the pulse from my chest
- to deny a mother the dignity of dying first?
- You say: in the name of the father and the son
- She says: in the name of my sisters
- slain in meaningless massacres
- for loving their own skin
- A people do not survive
- monsoons of oppression
- only to savage their own kin.
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Copyright © by the author.
