KIRSTY A. NIVEN - Cycles

Tendai Mwanaka

A Flag as a Makeshift Alter

Number 1 chancellor road has been staring at the same point for generations now and the journey forward is the journey back to the past. Before you deliberately ferment chaos for a few donor dollars, the ever clever manipulative tactics of the esoteric, a sense of purpose is what you should cultivate. The flag is the only thing left for you to wave, the fists have become the open palms, and the open palms have become a thrusting back and forth pointing finger. But before you tell us the blacks are failures- that black countries are failures first thank the

blacks for not putting arrows in your ancestor’s backs as they exterminated our grandmothers, as they curved countries out of our country into private property. The past is etched in all of our eyes, the old glory has spread thinner. Black is always trying to be adjacent to

white to stay black. Racism has gone downstairs and we can’t have the fake without the original. Half there, now we wait...

Mwanaka - 165

Kirsty A. Niven

Cycles

The mad girl spiral, time for another loop –one last dip in the tumultuous pool, the roundabout of waves that wail on and on.

A final round in the squared circle, ghosts face me in the top left corner ready with another ectoplasm right hook.

Tori Amos – ‘Winter’ repeats again. I can still feel the dried grass on my elbows. Pollen scent. The sensation sinks.

Niven - 166

The Bottom

Like Plath, I have been to the bottom –dragging limp feet along the ocean’s floor. Disposed plastic clinging to my mulchy skin, abandoned shells cracking under my toes. I’ve said goodbye in a hundred letters, sent them off in discarded Bordeaux bottles

and watched them float to the surface.

It became an odd kind of comfort –relaxing in the reef, drowning in my sorrows.

I hadn’t realized that teetering on the edge of possibility could be so much worse, crystal happiness dangling over the jagged rocks, shadows of love dashed upon their points –coastal compost, prey for Jamaica Inn’s wreckers. Strangled by sultry seaweed, its grasping arms holding fast to my desperate dreams.

Niven - 167

Hesitation Marks

A sea of cooling milk beneath: unexpectedly soft and sweet. My stained lips leave a crescent moon in blood, a tattooed welt on your shoulder.

A regimented row of indents curves, the token smile left behind.

Niven - 168

Dark Star

Dark star, I wish I were as elusive as you –darting across the evening sky and never looking back at morning’s dew. I know that I alone felt that high. Your concrete casing deflects all sight, guarding you from obligations –the freedom for which you fight. No sign of crumbling foundations. You tower above, forever unseen, moving from one dream to another powered only by potent caffeine and I’m subsisting like every other.

Still to know you is to feel and to spew poetry in a constant spiel.

Niven - 169