Poems by Busamoya Phodiso Modirwa

Monologue at the Thanksgiving Table  

Think about it this way

Nobody wants to return home to a house cradling an inferno like a child

With charred images around the dinner table mistaking the smoke for an aroma of something good

You know, dinner, peace, normalcy

The kids do not like fireworks anymore

There is always something up in flames around here

A sacrifice they know could well be them so they offer something of theirs

Their toys, their school books, their childhood

If you had happened somehow on a vicious vice

Lines or the bottle or something could be excused

But it’s just you my darling

Inside a temper that sometimes lends you all to us

There are no heroes or villains in this story

Just two flames that don’t know how to burn together

And maybe that’s ok

There is nothing left on the family album by way of pictures

Nothing sits still even for the saying of grace

What is grace about while you’re the turkey at the thanksgiving table

Ready to have the last bits of you shredded silly

Ready to be between jaws and swallowed into darkness

Ready to meet your maker by way of a lover’s hands

I do not want to die this way

So, this  turkey will up and walk her way

Stuffed with all her children

Happy thanksgiving

My Name Packed Up Its Belongings In God’s Good Books And Walked Out

The world existed only to heroes and villains

In black and white monochrome portraits of past and present

Binaries distinguished this so perfectly made no sense why

there were courts and lawyers

                                             Church for the good, prison for the bad

                  Thought I belonged in the church

Before good became a thing a matter of fishing  in a cocktail of life’s choices

Before I loved boys and spent my mornings one too many Sundays sleeping away

Before the anxiety came for my voice, and the little of it left, I morphed into prayer

Sent it to heaven though a paper kite, which couldn’t fly past my own mind

                                                 I was good or wasn’t I?

                    A bird perched on my window fell down to its death

I guess in the good books of God my name packed up its

belongings and walked out the door

About the Poet:

Busamoya Phodiso Modirwa is a Motswana writer and poet who writes as a way to interact with the world around her. She is a recipient of the Botswana President’s Award for Contemporary Poetry 2016. Her work appears on Praxis Online Magazine, Kalahari Review, Ake Review, Jalada Africa and elsewhere. Her short story, ‘The Healing Balm’ was shortlisted for the Botswana Tourism Fiction Award 2019.