Two Poems 

By Vuyelwa Maluleke

AT THE SALON

The hairdresser unties my doek

unties my marriage In front of the women in the salon.

My hair Is the type of woman who does not stop sleeping in public because she drools

And cooks without salt because she does not like it 

'are you still single?' She asks

And dishonours my hair with her hands first

her hands frown when I say yes

I am sorry and pleased by this

No one has built a house around my small neck

If I want I can have a lover for each finger

'What are we doing today?'

I say 'Conrows, I've already washed the hair'

She says 'eh, you, your hair is a stone' 

And tears it into four halves

She opens my grandmothers face with the back of the comb 

I fall out of the middle and scream 'ouch'

'When I finish, you will be beautiful'

She wants me to be surprised

but I am already beautiful

She says something in an anthem I cannot whistle

My hair sits like salt

Is the bottom of the river

Is a chest of pebbles

She tells me she will put my hair in water again and set it on fire

That's how we soften women like you

My hair is a burning bush

I pay her for the two hours of homelessness

I pay her for making me a woman

For arranging my marriage.

🍦🍦🍦

YOU ARE NOT TOO OLD TO SCREAM WHEN YOU HURT YOURSELF ON PEOPLE

You are counting your skin while the phone rings 

You are counting the darkness from the bedroom to the lounge, 

You stop inside your mouth to count the word u-g-l-y, 

To count W-O-M-A-N

to count 'd-o y-o-u l-o-v-e m-e'

You are counting lovers with your house

This one is a door, you were only supposed to walk through

but you stay and live in the passage 

carry her frame in your bones, 

carry her in the shower with soapy hands

Carry her on your knees into the car, 

hunch over, 

speak soft like cracking skin, 

get drunk with the balcony

Smoke with the balcony

Kiss the balcony

smell cold for months, 

Smell like a cage, step into a ghost whenever someone says her name 

Speak like a spirit on the phone with your friends

Remember how you didn't swallow your saliva for a month after

she told you, over the phone, that she is leaving you. 

This one is a table you lay everything on

Offer her the cinnamon dress in your mouth 

Offer her your darkness, 

Offer her a broach with your tongue on it to pin on her shirts

Offer her your slow arms that learn to close around her like water, like light

Then like a gun facing the whole world 

Maybe you scare her when you offer open, in the middle of an ocean,

And drink all the water in her taps to make more oceans to offer.

Maybe you scare her when you offer yourself, and she is still never full. 

But Count this: D-o n-o-t e--ver offer a--nyone what you have not offered yourself f-i-r-s-t. 

☀☀☀☀☀

Vuyelwa Maluleke, is a Joburg-based Spoken Word Artist, Scriptwriter and Actor with a BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Witwatersrand. She was shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2014 , is the author of a chapbook  ‘THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE’ and the slam champion of the Word and Sound 2015 Poetry league competition. She describes herself explicitly as a storyteller, archiving, through her writing a personal experience of her blackness and womanness whilst navigating present day South Africa. Her writing serves as evidence that the black female body in South Africa is consistently being broken into in various spaces, that it can love and affirm itself is evidence of its ability to survive and want to survive. 

Back Forth