The Coming Eruption by Salimah Valiani

Salimah Valiani | March 14th, 2022 | poetry | No Comments

Poem

the coming eruption

my first encounter with it

walking fast
Maboneng to town
with a fiercely internationalist filmmaker friend

far east on Commissioner
before Troyville
a hollow complex ringing with
Fanakalo

liquid orange language
created
in the mines heated crossroads of the
country entire Southern slice and more

the aspiration of Esperanto born
and living through
needs of unintending capitalists

second encounter

in a participant observer’s book
first depiction of
women’s lives in the mines

third

Dudula [Dubula] in Alexandra

my lover sharing how the language is ridiculed rejected

child throttling truth and tumbling back of words of another friend another time

‘if you had seen how my Tswana mother was made to feel in my Pedi community’

coming

Fanakalo Esperanto
remaking earth

Poet Bio

Salimah Valiani is a poet, researcher and activist. Her most recent poetry collection is 29 leads to love (Inanna 2021).

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