Author: saaleha

I am a writer and photographer (look up my work on www.shootcake.com) based in Johannesburg, South Africa. I have an MA in Creative Writing from the university currently known as Rhodes. My writing accolades include winning the 2014 Writivism Short Story Prize and the 2020 Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize for my debut collection, Zikr.

bullet control

suck your thumb in ambient red. the universe ends at a point just before a crimson curtain fall.
time will soon betray and all this will be no closer than the time you missed the falling star by eyelashes. but for now, seconds sliding into their peers, is the lull, the ebb and flow of a living, giving heat. this is all you know. for now.
till one who once knew what you knew, since forgotten, takes metal to time-slapped palm, and a single shard of hurt to heart.
and while you suck your thumb in ambient red, the world forgets to take its lithium.
and an ob/gyn with a six-chambered heart and whose bedsidemanner is reassuring steel, performs your unscheduled ceasarian.

rush hour

the world comes together at twilight;
day seaming shut, sun bleeding into a pool
and at the edges, the gentle assertiveness of stars.
but the traffic makes us forget.
overcome by lightshows from the other amnesiacs, the mind spills over with the detritus of the day and the recurring comfort of Home.

Red robot, our evening star.
brake light, clutch, brake, stop, de-gear.

and for a moment, look out the window and the soul breathes.

and coughs.
your spirit-kin gripping dirty cardboard, calling out for God to bless you.
your wet-soap eyes slip through, you can’t afford the awkward connection, and your pupils find a point just beyond the lazy bum who cracks your heart a little before you steel it once again.
and there, is the little girl.
with the whole wide world speeding around her, their minds spilling over with the detritus of the day and the recurring comfort of Home.
And she looks to the moon, her cardboard held high, a waving fan, brushing against the stars she is, jumping up, flapping wings, chasing at the fireflies above.
something almost pulls, come out and play.
almost.

Green robot.
clutch, accelerator.
Go.

Of things we sometimes imagine

the box on the shelf
with the black-penned Possibility
has a lid that won’t close
for
yesterday’s thinkings
and tomorrow’s
procrastinations
clutter

and never lie flat.

in it is the house i’d build
and fill with his favourite things.

he’d laugh,
for he hasn’t seen the butter-flour apron
beneath the ink of my liberal jeans,

but there I’ll be;
a smile in his kitchen
and one for when he’d wake,

between my work with words
and the song of sunrise
sweeping outside the front door.

buddy talk

I’ve been your friend since you puked up on me in grade school, I can tell you this. You buddy, make roadkill look attractive.

-Sheesh, I know i’m not the best looking guy around…

Well, thank God you don’t harbour any of those delusions.

-But she only wants to marry me because of the money.

A woman’s gotta love you for something. Be grateful.

Alfred at No 30, Streetview Terrace.

There was another crazy person at the door.

This one had a pink plastic garden flamingo in a sleeper embrace under his right arm, while he authoritively left-palmed a faux-cheetahfur bound filofax. Looking very much like a sunday morning tv-evangelist with a god-struck devotee and a well-thumped bible, Alfred thought, squinting cautiously through the peekhole.

Yesterday’s one was an attractive brunette wearing electric-blue Manolohs. Continue reading Alfred at No 30, Streetview Terrace.