The new class for the care worker course
I am taking
is packed wall to wall
with dying bodies.
Their hollow eyes are searching
for a path to flee
this whirlpool of a country,
to seek resurrection on other mountains.
You can almost touch the panic
the need is raw like the wet inside of an ear,
intimate.
I once faked a queer hate crime
to get a police report.
I thought I could use it
to get asylum somewhere
but the cracked ocean of borders
is a maze of stringent laws,
passport colours
and the missing limbs
of those who’ve tried to
cross it.
There are stories of my father mutating into a serpent,
his two-forked tongue a charm packed with lies
he had to tell the immigration police.
My sister tried out a fraud scheme
in South Africa once,
her green hands
cupping desperation.
She could have come back home
but home is an aching sinkhole
nothing ever survives here
the barren life will crowd you out,
so we part the air
to leave no matter the circumstance.
We break the sky
with chants and concoctions
from medicine men
who promise us guaranteed visas,
a goat sacrifice,
the soil eating
the blood of a cock’s neck.
Prayers wrapped in tight plastic balls.
Zibusiso Mpofu (he/they) is queer writer from Zimbabwe. His work has been published or is forthcoming on The Hong Kong Review, Brittle Paper, A Long House, Intwasa Anthology, Water Damaged Anthology and Work In Progress Hong Kong. He is the winner of the 2022 Brunel African Poetry Prize. Zibusiso’s work centers around healing and the intentional building of better future worlds among other themes. Their writing is an act of weaving the dark effects of trauma and memory into light and healing.
