Nothing exists but the stories we tell,
True or False, Stories have limits
as do facts
duration isn’t a fact
It’s given only to stories
I speak in Fish
Alone I float, weightless
under the ripples, around
the muffled laughter darting
through the water, as if
the sounds fought its way
to present itself to my ears.
Long legs of white, brown, black,
are pale with a hue of blue.
Light from above pokes
through like shards,
breaking, scattering against
the shadows of the deep.
I look up to my father and mother
standing above the water,
now different than from
my recollection, they glance
toward me then not.
They are disfigured
by the ripples in a form
constantly changing, never
returning to the shape they
once were. They look unfamiliar.
I open my mouth and I speak
in fish with soundless bubbles,
the language of gravenche
and beyşehir bleak, yet I wonder how
they can tell that they
are so dear.
The water grows quiet,
the legs are all gone,
I have been here too long,
my skin wrinkles.
I see that my father and mother
too have gone, no more than
a memory, and the ripples
of a powder blue sky fade
darker to black, a universe
quiet and alone. I still look up
into the emptiness,
breathless, wondering
what I did to make them all leave.
B. A. Varghese graduated from Polytechnic University (New York) with a degree in Electrical Engineering and is currently working in the Information Technology field. Inspired to explore his literary side, he has earned a B.A. in English from the University of South Florida. His works have appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Apalachee Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and other literary journals. (www.bavarghese.com)…
Continue reading “Extracts from ‘expecting a different result’ by Sarah Dawson”“These works were made by tracing fragments of various texts relating to haunting, ghosts and spirituality, and pinning them to folded/unfolded tracing paper.”
Year(s): 2017 – 2019, Medium: Ink on Cartridge Paper
“Man & Nature I” (2018)
This met me upon entering the dispensation in Harare where my aunt purchases chicken parts for the butcher shop. Everyone in the shop was amused at my fascination with this goat (ox?) head on the counter; I was reminded how very little I know about where my American meat comes from.
“A foggy day in London town
Had me low, and had me down
I view the morning with alarm
The British Museum has lost its charm…”
–––– From “A Foggy Day” recorded by Sun Ra (with the Nu Sounds), 1954
UK Inheritance
You sold the house we owned
And left us destitute
Removed mama from her throne
And abandoning your own yout*
The Windrush catastrophe
Said they don’t need you no more
You can tek yourself elsewhere
We’ve bolted the entry door
Caribbean people in the UK
Are the colonizers’ children who resist
So many went to stay
They are why the industrial revolution exists
Marching for reparations each year
August first named Emancipation day
So how do we measure this new dawn
When far right governments are ready to slay
What heritance can we claim?
With promises and structures being disbanded
So many people clutching at straws
That represented a future imagined
Testing times for us all
This twenty-first-century space
Some ancestors are watching with scorn
As the colonizers rewrite the race
UK inheritance has no home
For many Africa is the place
A new unknown possibility
Where we will meet those who have the same face
*children
Mbeke @Waseme1 is an international Education Consultant, who has supported those who worked in formal and informal learning environments towards a changing paradigm of teaching and learning. She has lived and worked in Jamaica, Ghana, the UK, and Malaysia where each placement lasted for three or four years. She worked as a volunteer in Cameroun for three months. She has written for many years and her skills as a writer of short stories have taken a leap forward in the past eighteen months. Mbeke’s most recent work was featured in This is Us, Black British and Female (2019) and Trusted Black Girl. Challenging Perceptions and Maximising the Potential of Black Women in the UK Workplace edited by Roianne Nedd (2018). Her body of work includes a series of articles and interviews on health and business which first appeared in the UK publication African business and culture. Her short stories have appeared in Fifth Estate, Dovetails, Pure Slush, The Writers café, with essays, and academic articles in Pambazuka and 72M. She is currently living in the UK for the first time in 10 years.
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 