Aardvark
Odd Park

And the wind whips the unsteady fingers
of rain
like the swirls and whirls
of ice-cream in cones -

melting on my unsteady fingers,
on a sun-stricken holiday
belonging to a place
in which I don't belong -

until the rain and I meet
in recognition
and open fingers

Uncle Sam sometimes whispers a little bit too close.
I’ve felt so many scraps scraping against my cheek-
those numerous numberless things he carries in his
beard by ‘accident’. So many things get stuck there
and I feel them all, whenever he dares, and he dares
often, to whisper alittlebittooclose. One time the grey
beard leaned in and touched me in my sleep and
planted in me strange dreams of faraway gothic towers
passing off as libraries: Harvard dreams, Princeton
dreams, Yale dreams: I haven’t quite slept since. The
shaggy scraps stuck to the forest of strands on his face
would never let me. They scratch away at me often
even in the brightness of day, and claw jaggedly in the
darkness of night. Little heart of mine has lost its own
beat. It beats to the beat of a beat on a beat from a beat
with a beat by a beat which beats those beats and beats
beats that beat not of my beat. Little heart of mine, when
did you lose your own pulse? Why won’t you tell your family
that Uncle Sam’s whispers are more than whispers? Why
won’t you tell your family what Uncle Sam does to you
in the brightness of day when everyone is smiling as Uncle
Sam pats your shoulder? Little heart of mine, why doesn’t
your family know what Uncle Sam does in the darkness
of night as he whispers whispers under your whispers and
what he does beneath your skin? Didn’t you know, little heart?
They have laws that say that greybeards shouldn’t be digging
into little boys’ insides, don’t they.

(Uncle Sam has travelled
far and wide, far and wide to tell me lies.
Recall that this is not the first time…)

But little heart you know why. This is not the first time.
It is the natural progression for a Coconut like you:
darkness of night on outside and brightness of day on inside.
Your skin doesn’t matter; you all taste the same.
Cut you off the homeland-tree and cart you all away.
Then, in this way we can say and say the homeland is “Rising”-

Uncle Sam tells the world of his diversity in selection
of little boys to touch with strange dreams.
And I like the feel of the scraps in his beard. Maybe
I can become one of them. One with them.

World watch me,
aflame; hear me
roaring strange emanations
of inner dreams made external,
made vivid made real made me
made world. Watch
and wonder: How
did mere mortal learn
to speak in godly tongues?
World I'll learn, world
I'll learn. Just
wait, wait for me
to

grow.

Quaint Acacia tree forest:
******, unblemished as it was
when my grandparents first met here-
mountain school.

The chapel beside the administration
office
is locked.

But just as holy are the dark coal
mountain
rocks
that sweetly fell from God's hands before
Jesus set his feet here.

He didn't.
This place is lovely nonetheless.

There's always that one girl

with the astonishing smile
and the little sly gap
      between her front teeth-

charming because it screams of mischief.

There's always that one girl

with the literature voice
and the Zimbabwe speech
    sneaking in through her

points, arguments, metaphors. Identity.

That one, inexplicable, eccentric
     girl

who somehow teaches you
how take to take a selfie in the dark
nighttime balcony of an African university.

And somehow by the end of it,
as you are carried away to tomorrow
by the sound of her new sim-card voice,

you wonder why some victories
cannot be gold medals you can take
back home to your parents,

as she bus-drifts away back to that
spirited mother land
that hatched her onto a podium.

Then that new sim-card is discarded.
And some smiles you cannot forget.