POWAMANA & OTHER POEMS

By Dacious Kasoka 

                             Photo Credit: Reyna Noriega 

POWAMANA 

I bend to write poetry about a girl 

I’m sitting next to in the lecture theater.

I’m suicidal so I’m so careful not to show 

how grief gulps my breath each time I 

hold a pen to write.

I start by carving prayer beads & how I 

just fold my body like origami paper to 

burn a few prayers in crescendo- something 

I haven’t done since Jesus was nailed to 

the cross.

A neon street sits in her eyes &, I, an

outlander admiring its tapestry, have 

learned to write about something 

I cannot call mine. Watch love morph 

into resentment & remembers to 

sting & smother.

I wonder what it feels like to hold 

a thing so dear in the heart & name it 

love & whisper it in songs & in poetry 

& pluck it from the wind blowing at 

your bedroom window at 2 a.m. & 

spread it in your bones & feel it’s 

magic douse in the marrows.  

                                                                 

NDABENI 

 

Every night you visit me  

sometimes in my dreams. 

 

We sit on the balcony 

 & watch lusaka unfold in  

 

Endless blackness. 

Burned out traffic lights.  

 

Soot roads cluttered with  

the blaring buses. 

Every night you’re here  

reeking of dead autumn leaves. 

 

Fingers clad in guitar strings,  

writing soft music on my cracked skin.

                                                                 

DEVIL IN A RED DRESS

Inspired by a line in Noviolet Bulawayo’s novel ‘We Need New Names.’

The devil is a pretty woman in a red dress

in a transit van trolling down the streets of Matero

like a moon drifting past dying embers in a room 

littered with the smell of rough sex- two lovers 

chewing each other’s breath, the staggering taste when

water walks between two tongues,

silent moans drowning in liquid wind, walloping sirens,

neon lights, a stale sequence of orgasms unfolding 

piece by piece. 

                                                         

Dacious Kasoka, alias “Loner Pen” was born on the 19th of August 2000. He writes from his room in Lusaka. His poems have been published and are forthcoming in Writers Space Africa Magazine, World Voices magazine, Agape Review, Arts Lounge magazine, Spillwords press, The Kalahari Review & elsewhere.