stroked
in most awful orange,
you will learn
boy
that man is only wood
that life disappears
like smoke
that skin
runs like butter
we
circle black
round black
watch it swim in the heat
of sun
and not
these colours that killed you
boy
did you not know
the hum of the veld
when little remains
but char
ember
and stray dog
boy
have you not seen
we are nailed together
two planks of time
swinging
in this dust
nervous and dry
waiting for the match.
at last
at last
arms curl away from bones
man opens like bark
becomes the youngest tree
and burns
_______________
1In South Africa, ‘necklacing’ is the act of forcing a rubber tyre around a person’s shoulders, dousing them in petrol and setting them alight to burn to their death. It emerged during Anti-Apartheid movements in the 1980’s, notoriously in the murder of Maki Skhosana, as an instrument of collective violence and mob justice against those who had been perceived to betray the movement. As a particularly horrific expression of widespread xenophobic narratives, necklacing has re-emerged in the last decade against immigrants from other African countries who move to South Africa seeking a different life.
Ianne is a genderqueer South African writer. They resist power (and its many masks) from a position of whiteness. They have an M.A. in African Literature and are undertaking an MFA in Creative Writing in the near future. Ianne is 26 years old and resides in rural South Africa, with a giant dog named Fitzgerald, where they run a reading and literacy program at an Education Intervention Centre. Ianne stands for a continent that contains a radically different future in its queer presents. Their spells against sadness include black coffee, dancing badly to hip-hop and burning agarbathi.
