Contra

Listen to me.

This will be no convocation, invocation, celebration

of the words and colours

hues and history

so conveniently used

by the swollen mouths of my politicians.

Listen to me.

This will be no joyful, blissful

dust-shake dance drawn by the distance

we feel in that delicious word: diaspora.

This will be mine

and because of this, it will be flawed

This will be mine

and because of this, it will be skewed

This will be mine

and because of this, I will cloak myself in metaphor and song.

Because that is all I have ever known how to do.

This is not a command.

A sassy splash of pith from a conveniently-cute brown girl

I am not telling you

I am asking.

Please.

Listen to me.

Let us begin with the undeniable.

The blatant that I have grown to have no desire to erase.

My speech: laced with the inflections of imperialism

Clear, like a silver knife on crystal

Dry, like the re-written pages torn out of beloved books

and thrown onto the fervent fire of nationalism.

Hear me. And you will know.

Know of the wordy-love I draw deep into me

from an inherited language. a learned language. a given language.

a language with a hand to cover and

smother the one I’ve had since birth

with a tenderness only a lover could know.

Empa. Ha ke batla, nka bua le wena ka Sesotho saka. Sesotho saka se robeileng.

Sesotho saka se snaaks. Sesotho saka sa Jozi, e ke buang, ke Sesotho se nyamelang.

And if I want, I could speak to you in a language that is mine.

In a language that is broken, twisted, bent at fantastical angles

similar to those of uprooted Jacaranda trees

in a thunderstorm.

But Maneo…you’re not that kind of black.

As ek wou, ek kon hierdie taal gebruik. Die taal van ‘Voetsek!’, en ’Pasop!’ en ‘Doen dit nie!’. Maar ook die taal van granate, van liefde, en “die kind is nie dood nie…”

I could tell you about arms held

and lips kissed

and this reluctant rebellion that love has repeatedly afforded me

Contra-Colour

Contra-Gender

My father sat me down:

“Neo, love does not choose.”

It decides.

I have had words.

flung at me and stuffed in my mouth.

Some I’ve swallowed gleefully and believed them as my own.

Words like pointed fingers

pointing to privilege

pointing to difference

pointing to brilliance

pointing towards and away from beauty

my own fingers reaching and curling for the substance of blackness.

But let us end with the undeniable:

my skin glows with it

my waist curves with it

my voice hums with it, with the mathematical memory of jazz

when I sing

“Ndawo Yami…”

and yet thrums

with the throw of Apartheid shackles when I sing

“Hou jou hande bymekaar en glo die roes sal bedaar…”

I am free with it

and kept by it with the claustrophobic closeness

of a green-eyed embrace.

And so I ask again that you listen to me.

Beyond and beneath the cinnamon of my skin.

Maneo Mohale

Submission by Maneo Mohale, South Africa.

Member of the Caribbean African Association, Africa Awareness Initiative and UBC Slam.