how the first sparks became visible

Simone Atangana Bekono, David Colmer

• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781912915569
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Simone Atangana Bekono's poems are vivid and arresting, with the feeling of letters or diary entries. In nine breath-taking streams of consciousness, the poet explore race, gender and sexuality, addressing the social stigmatization of race and gender and invoking empathy and human connection in a voice that is both confident and innovative.

IX.

You do not see clearly the evil in yourself, else you would hate yourself with all your soul. Like the lion who sprang at his image in the water, you are only hurting yourself, O foolish man. When you reach the bottom of the well of your own nature, then you will know that the vileness was from yourself.

‘XXXIX: The Evil in Ourselves’, Jalalu’l-Din Rumi,
translated from the Persian by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

Children with feet grey with dust

throw stones at my shadow

they think I’m ignoring them

but I’m observing the cracked earth

what’s left of a dried up river

hopefully the water goddesses

got away in time

I hear gossip from the air goddesses

who tickle the leaves of the trees with their whispers

before accompanying aeroplanes to a health resort

Why am I only now writing about children and water goddesses

I used to write long letters to the women

who had patiently moulded and polished me

to the women I sat around tables with

talking about our bodies

the fluctuating degrees of bulge

we observed each other’s faces with piercing looks

some call it friendship

I call it a lioness playing with her food

In Giovanni’s Room James Baldwin says in the decisive scene

that rage made the killer lighter

fear made the victim grow heavier

rage is black water in which I am floating, in which I can drown

a treacherous sea

I have forgotten the women

I play on the beach

find bones in the sand and

all black people identify with drowned people

I said it and now I have to justify it too

So in my letter I sketch a picture of people falling into black water

a marathon is being run around black water

every now and then someone stumbles and splashes into the water

like a chicken breast on a chopping board

but then in black water

the water is black because we don’t know how deep it is

someone dives, a straight line into black water

almost no ripples

someone drinks big draughts of it

There was an edge of a building

but there was also surf

the shore

the last bit of drinking water in a wrung-out landscape

the full bucket in my hand

I dig holes in the sand

to pour water into

I see myself in the black water

my reflection gulping for breath

This poem is a combination of several poems

dictated by something beautiful and painful

but I like to sleep and sometimes I get hungry

a soldier keeps getting pushed back under

every time he tries to pull himself up out of the black water

sopping-wet uniform and all

a representation of the incapacity to evade violence or death

I write down as much as I can

in the available time

I anger the water goddesses and I anger the lions

unable to remember why I walked out into the sun

I have to post my letter in the heat of the day

I have to ignore the tingling in my fingertips

my creaking collarbones

I can’t remember why

People sit chained by the ankles to other people

while those people try not to fall in the water but still fall

dragging behind them the whole chain of people who absolutely

did not need to fall into the black water

nature is a causal connection

if everything is causally connected hierarchy falls away

and the deer and I are friends

it is only a coincidence that I am a hunter

and the water just happens to be black

In their panic to keep out of the water

people push other people

into the water that swallows up everyone and everythin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Other Titles From The Emma Press
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• I.
• II.
• III.
• IV.
• V.
• VI.
• VII.
• VIII.
• IX.
• Acknowledgements
• About the Poet
• About the Translator