New Poetry by Jana Van Niekerk
I told you
I told you I wanted Brad Pitt to pop my cherry.
You said you would stand in
till he arrived.
I told you I was no Thelma and Louise
Hell-bent on destruction.
You said this car can fly.
I told you
only half the story,
a third,
less.
Because it didn’t seem to matter.
You listened, so I didn’t have to speak.
When I told you the really big things
I had to show you
you said
I want to hear it all. You used my name, but used
is not the right word.
What I didn’t tell you
is I want you
so you started singing it instead,
I made you
but not.
What I can’t tell you
is not silent but invisible,
sparkling and unwitting like Brad
to be sure
but poignant
like he never was,
Thelma only knows.
Sandwich
This mouse and I shared some bread.
It was good.
I did not mind that
his mouse lips had been where mine are now.
His mouse teeth
tearing away the soft ciabatta cliffs
in fact I barely noticed
the indent in the loaf
his kamikaze ways
his little life.
He might have been
the baker’s thumb
an air bubble
a burp in the dough
an illusion
except I saw the way
where he had gnawed the wall to get in
squeezed his soft body
into impossibly narrow cracks
flattening himself
like this very slice
wondering why I was so furious
not to share
the joy of my kitchen
his fuzzy whiskers imprinted in the butter,
his breath
Restitution
I was on that mountain in Israel
Oh God of us all,
my Elijah.
I stood by the Jordan,
as you are my witness.
You asked,
What are you worshipping?
The ravens feed us.
We parted the waters.
I know the plans I have for you.
For good, and not disaster.
I will not burn you to the ground my Love.
Our meeting room
had admittance
rugged enough
to turn back the tempter’s power.
Our gateway.
Yahweh
and I am sorry to be so crass
as to communicate the incommunicable
But we missed the sticky door of death.
God came to fetch us
with fiery horses
the solid ground we had walked so long on
the dry whirlwind,
the lava of our altars.
I can’t be the sacrificial lamb,
you said
that sip of whiskey
the bottle still held in the cupboard
just in case.
I always thought I would
come down
one day
and somehow you would give me a Tablet.
I had to be near you.
I needed to be cheerful.
You would help.
Instead I got a taste for
letting go and letting be.
I am the word,
I said:
faith, miracle and adversity.
Poetry
Good morning Beloved
The Beloved didn’t speak
yet
so that something terrible
doesn’t happen in the night
When she does,
she says thank you my Angel
But first of all
how was that rain, the shower
under the flag of goodwill
Perhaps peace is not the
absence of violence
between word and music
How was
a swallow gargling in his throat
that which was
perhaps
written on the threshold.
Jana van Niekerk is a South African writer living in Cape Town. Her short stories and poetry appear in multiple journals including New Coin, New Contrast, Botsotso and Aerodrome and in collections such as For the Duration (brought out by Botsotso in 2015) and The Garden of the Beloved (the 2021 McGregor Poetry Festival Anthology). She has also published children’s books and romance novellas under different names.