White Girl, black boy
The human skin is now the only existing surface
That has survived a history of self recognition, of expositions.
The dermis has become an interlocutor of presencing, as a surface
It both limits, transcends the contours of the landscape and flesh
I imagine, imagining my imaginations
What if white is not?
Really white!
A smudgy pinkish colour?
The black boy thinks: If i was really black, i might not really be seen
Because I could hide things in my own blackness and if she were really white
When she is being white, white as genetically white
She wouldn’t see me, for she would only be the wind
Light stripes of wind, pinned around my corporeal clothes
Like cold tasting light, itself in the mouth of itself
The white girl thinks: It is a black skin muddled, annihilated of its truth
No more his own skin; crythematous-patches, necrotic tissues-indurated
Skin boiling in its blackness
The black thing always, wanting, needling…
Getting in the way,
Even now
Like the deadly white of the sky
She inherited the whiteness
The sugar coating whiteness
It is whiteness
As witness
She thinks, and you can’t deny her that: This is what has been passed down to me
A white horned hunger to live, live and live and live
In this whiteness
Whiteness as white-coloured white?
The two, the white girl and the black boy, are talking of the premonition of presence that is always hovering on either side of this threshold( the threshold is the skin), which attempts to harness a centrality of spirit, and the rituals each of the two enacts to draw it out in their relationship.
But, I will do an Alice walker here
And I imagine, with Walker, the psychic liberation of black if it understands
Black is not really black
I imagine, still with Walker, the exhilarating feeling of white if it could walk (doing a Walker with me) away from the caged feeling
Of its body, in its own skins
autumn
Forward to a reddish autumn
Multi-layered, multi-
coloured paths
Emblems of our archetypes
And metaphors
of our times
Unthinkable parameters
If colours could swap?
Tendai R Mwanaka: ”
I was born in the remote eastern highlands district of Nyanga, Zimbabwe, inMapfurira village, grew up there and did my primary, secondary, and high school in that area. Left Nyanga for Chitungwiza city in 1994, and I started exploring writing that year, when I was barely twenty. I have also worked in the sales and marketing field for over 8 years, and have a graduate diploma in marketing (GradSaim). I have stayed in South Africa for two and half years, but I am now back in Zimbabwe, where I stay in Chitungwiza city. My first book to be published, VOICES FROM EXILE, a collection of poetry on Zimbabwe’s political situation and exile in South Africa was published by Lapwing publications, Northern Ireland in 2010. KEYS IN THE RIVER: Notes from a Modern Chimurenga, a novel of interlinked stories that deals with life in modern day Zimbabwe’s soul was published by Savant books and publications, USA 2012. A book of creative non-fiction pieces, ZIMBABWE: THE BLAME GAME, was published by Langaa RPCIG( Cameroon 2013), a poetry collection entitled PLAYING TO LOVE’S GALLERY will be published by DIP PRESS(USA, 2014), a novel entitled, A DARK ENERGY will be published by Aignos publishing company(USA, 2014). Poetry books: Revolution, Logbook written by a drifter, and Voicesfrom exile, were both short listed by the Erbacce press poetry prize in2012, 2011, and 2009 respectively, another poetry book entitled Pearls of Awareness was short listed for the Twoz creations chapbook prize (2012)..
I was nominated for the Pushcart twice, 2008, 2010, commended for the Dalro prize
2008, work has been translated into French and Spanish. I was nominated and
attended The Caine African writing workshop, 2012. Published over 250
pieces of short stories, essays, memoirs,
poems and photographic/visual art in over 150 magazines, journals, and
anthologies in the following countries, the USA , UK , Canada ,
South Africa, Zimbabwe, India , Mexico, Kenya, Cameroon, Italy ,
Ghana, Uganda, France , Zambia, Nigeria, Spain , Romania, Cyprus,
Australia and New Zealand. I am also a musician
and sound artist with a number of songs and sound recordings playing on
internet music places like Radio Airplay,
Soundcloud… This year I have been a contributor to several anthologies,
WE WILL SURVIVE; this is a wonderful book of hopeful stories … Not just
hopeful, but personal stories of survivors. They all have one common theme, and
that is Gloria Gaynor’s hit “I Will Survive.”
