BLACK ORANGES Xenophobia my son I hear a murmur in the streets A babble of adjoining markets Your conscience itching with guiltiness like Genital leprosy Your wide eyes are cups where tears never fall When they fall the storm wash down bullet drainsand garbage cities ii) Come nomzano with your whisper to drown, Blood scent stinking the rainbow altar. Darfur, petals of blood spreading, Perfume of death choking slum nostrils Slums laden with acrid smell of mud and Debris smelling like fresh dungs heaps Fear scrawling like lizards on Darfur skin Kibera. I see you scratching your mind like ragged linen Smelling the breath of slums and diesel fumes The smoke puffing out through ghetto ruins is the fire dousing the emblem of the state iii) Belly of Zambezi ache with crocodile and fish Villages piled like heaps of potatoes against the flank…
“Black Oranges,” Poetry by Mbizo Chirasha
