After Terrance Hayes

By Maxine Sibihwana

a clump of soil floats inside a water tank and pretends it’s in an ocean / it

has learnt how to do backstroke / it has stopped breathing / a clump of soil is

dying inside a water tank / it used to be a mango / it grew itself alive on a tree not

too far from here / here somewhere in London / here where being brittle is enough 

here somewhere in Eastern Kenya / here where the orange peels are too dry to

grow bodies of orange flesh or bones of seeds / here is where a mango fell in love

in the swamp by the playground of its primary school / here is where a mango met you

and you bit it and you ripped it apart and you skinned it alive but it still loved you / it

thanked God for you even though you smell like hellfire / who do you pray to? / who is

your master? who sent you to the swamp? who sharpened your teeth? was it not 

you who fell to earth with clipped wax wings and the body of a serpent? / not enough

for you to skin the mango alive / you had to shatter its spine / the seed. it used to

be a mango / this clump of soil used to be a mango, and it grew itself alive / it doesn’t want

to remember / it doesn’t remember its life on the playground / in the swamp / with you

here where being brittle is enough / it sinks into the ocean, enamoured and destroyed.