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Abigail George

When in Rome

by Abigail George

(for my paternal grandparents)

You and that see-through dark-haired girl, you love
her, don’t you. Let me count all the ways you love her.
I could be dead, or just missing, or just missing out
on you. Your name is a song inside my head, and mob
justice burns bright tonight. There’s so much of you
in the narrative and context of my stories. There will
always be so much of you. And we were never lovers,
nor boyfriend and girlfriend, just a crack in the system,
and you know how much I love you, and you know
about my nervous breakdown, that I never finished
high school, and I know you want to be a family-man,
I know you want to build a home; I know you want
to belong, but life means different things to us, to us.
My home is the world, my home is under Scandinavian
skies, my home is sexy-Swaziland, minor earth and

major sky. Your lips are like velvet, and my face is
made of stone. I think you’re the epitome of cool, want to
kiss you so much, pull you in real close, but you’re in
love with a dark-haired girl now, and I have to respect
you, and remember you, and remind you I loved you too,
I loved you before she did, I loved you first. It’s
lonely out here blogging away in this frozen wilderness,
but writing brings an order to my life, and my neck is
graceful, and you’ll never see me naked, it has been too
long, and so many things have gone unsaid between us.
So, this is goodbye then my loyal friend until I see you
in heaven. And I’m going to cry Argentina, there’s nothing
you can do about that. We could have been lovers. We
could have been lovers. We could have been lovers. And I’m
not maternal, although my throat has a masculine energy.


Hemingway is third time lucky

(for my paternal grandparents)

I’m lost, I’m lost, I confess. In a minute I’ll be gone. In another
minute I’ll belong to the past, escape the present. I’ll be stripped
bare. I’m a stranger to man, and I’m a stranger to woman, and all
I’ve ever wanted was to be in your arms, and be loved forever. But,
this relationship, or whatever it is, or was belongs to the past, and
I’ll count myself forever holy amongst the stars, and the passing of
time, and the illustration of dust, and the interpretation of prayer.
And all I ever wanted was you, dear boy, dear man, dear finite space,
and biological gap, and psychological warfare, and a wish bone to
lead me home, and universal sanctuary, and a university degree, and
a high school diploma, and now, and now I have none of these
trivia, none of these things that makes the woman, that marks the
career woman. And I have a mother, but she abandoned me at birth
because my father loved me more, and my sister despises me, and
my illness, my disease, my Christianity, my radical feminism, and
most of all me. I’m an extra, I’m a starlet-harlot, I’m a monkey who
does not want to behave, but I’ll only behave in your arms, except
that position is filled. It is nearly midnight, nearly turning-point when
I’m near-death, near-life, and in death I’ll be extraordinary and in
life I’ll be extra-ordinary. And if I ever get married, I promise to
submit, I promise to obey, I promise to love in sickness and in health.
I am in a tunnel fast approaching another bright light, another
nervous breakdown, and was I really so difficult, so different to love,
and you tell me in a thousand different ways of how much I’m impossible
to love, and the hallucinations, and the insomnia leave me bleary-
eyed, and I look you straight in the eye, I want to try and make

eye-contact with you, but you look away because you love another,
and I don’t binge-drink anymore, I’m no criminal mastermind,
fuck my intelligence, I’ve never slept with a married man, I’ve never
fallen for a woman, and even though I feel as if I’m a statistic, you
don’t, you don’t, you don’t love me anymore and I find it all so
difficult to be on my own, and I can’t bear the loneliness, I can’t
face you with another woman on your arm, and you say I look
like your daughter, and then I find it difficult to breathe, to look
away, because all I’ve ever wanted was you, and you tell your
secretary to tell me to fuck off and leave you alone. You’re work,
and I love your superstar personality, you were my sweet escape,
once my sweet embrace, and now because of the Sylvia Plath-
effect you want nothing to do with me, because of the mania and
the euphoric-high, because of the unstoppably catastrophic blue-
depression I guess I’m no good for anyone, but especially for you.
I’m a saint walking on water, I am Saul of Tarsus, I am Paul on
cocaine on the road to Damascus. I am the finite apostle glowing.
I’m swimming, my body like velvet, head above water rooting
for all daughters, and then drowning. Body-surfing, and then
head sinking beneath the vibrations of the waves, drowning again.
You have genie-daughters, while I have none. The lunar-phases
of endometriosis saw to my infertility. I have had orphan-abandonment
issues in the past. You have had abandonment issues in the past.
We’re both orphans. That’s the one thing that we have in common.
I can’t bear the rhetoric, the dogma, you can’t bear the church.
We should be in love, life-falling for each other but we’re not.



BIO

Abigail George’s fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She briefly studied film and television production at Newtown Film and Television School opposite the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. She is the writer of Africa Where Art Thou (2011), Feeding the Beasts (2012), All About My Mother (2012), Winter in Johannesburg (2014), Brother Wolf and Sister Wren (2015), and Sleeping Under the Kitchen Tables in the Northern Areas (2016). Her poetry has been widely published in anthologies, in print in South Africa, and in zines from Nigeria to Finland, and New Delhi, India to Istanbul, Turkey. She lives, works, and is inspired by the people of the Eastern Cape, South Africa.



When I was loved by you

by Abigail George

For my mother and my father

 

Bombs danced inside my
Head. Behind my eyes. Went off
In my soul. Made fireworks
In my chest. I didn’t know
Then what I know now.
That there was room to grow
Infinitely. Now nearing
Middle-age I don’t test myself
Like that anymore. I’ve
Given up on men and women
And having a small tribe of
Children. On having love and relationships.
I’ve given up on improving

Myself. Calling that
Progress or maturation. Once your
Voice was thunder and your
Touch electric but I’ve
Given up the ghost of
Your personality. I have
Gone the distance for you.
I am rain now breaking over pillows of verdant grass
And winter pavement.
The plural of wisdom
To me now is to keep
On moving. To live under a sky so blue with
Gladness. I am falling like
The sun’s birth day. I am
Alive. I am falling. I am mistress. I am master.
My truth is divine. Divine.

Father, you’re an expert at
Your ‘craft’. Mother, you were
Always a dynamo in the
Kitchen sewing-sewing a-
Way in my childhood. You
Shaped your daughters to
Follow men. You’re worried
Now about wrinkles and
Grey hair. Growing old and
Infirm in your own way.
Falling to the river in your
Dreams. My father looks at
Me as if to say goodbye forever.

 

 

Searching for my sister in middle age

 

Her name is much like the noisy
Movement of the coastline of the
Pacific. Her pain is remote and ghostly
To me as the streets and alleys of
California and Manhattan. She is
Young and beautiful. Holiness and
Machine. She is pure. Half-asleep
She is atrophied fire, rain, and air.
In my robust hands her hair blossoms
With the instinct of thunder. At
My kitchen table I feed the pillows
Of her red mouth trout and salmon.
Perhaps our frailest mother and father
Should have divorced years ago
When they were still young enough
To fall in love again. Marry other
People. Now they are too set in their
Own ways. They have built up a
Lifetime of habits in their vein walls.
Let me protect her and let her anchor
Me like a mirror. A glass of red wine
In the evening blinds her soul. The planet
Of all her nerves and jitters are not
Yet dead. One day our brown
Faces will be heavy with wrinkles.
Our hands will be prunes and our
Perfume will no longer bloom. We’ll fade
Away into the sun. Lines where our
Heart, lungs, liver once were. The vast
Tissues and organs of our immune
System running on empty. Nothing
Left to predict anymore. My hands scan
Everything. The distant underground maneuvering

The chains of the sea. Its switch from purple
At midnight to sea-green during the day.
We’re people merely acting out our problems.
Women acting a lonely bit part here and there.
Lonely rain, overwhelmingly the outsider
Marks the extinction of my sister’s flesh
And familiar bloodwork. She compensates
For far too many things that have gone
Wrong in her life. No milk in our breasts
For sons and daughters. Childhood not forgotten.
We braid our hair in silence. Oil on our hands.
Oil on our hands. The silent moon of our mother above us.
The hottest state of the sun of our father.
Faraway human voices speak softly to me.

 

The ghost of the adolescent Melissa Burjins

 

Gravid belly filled with stars
Gravid belly starless night
I burn with weariness in my soul
The rehabilitation of Hiroshima
And Nagasaki. Vacant rooms
Across continents smothered
By ancestors. Swimming in fields
Of carrion. Once upon a time
Kafka had a tyrant for a father.
I had a tyrant for a mother. Athletes
Are built tough. The bird’s shadow
At the window. Winter pavements
Shining with abalone and slick.
My eyes are empty. My soul is
A shell. There are rooms in my
Lungs that remind me of partings
That are faded. Stripped and jerking.
In the letting go you will find the
Climbing singing scorching weather.
I write books for a living. I call
It an ‘art’. That is all my nerves
Can take. Not love. Not men. Not women.
And so I open my notebook and
The day’s work begins with doubts.

Anxiety. Insecurity. Uncertainty.
My feet in a cement bucket/bath/field.
I am never to return to the girl
I was before. The flame is twisting,
Drowning, burning in my heart.
I want to kiss her lips. Take her hand
In mine. Tell her that I love her.
While I raise up the veil of the sun
In so many splendid ways and call
Upon the bride of the environment.
Gravid belly. Stars fill the night sky.
I remember all of her. All that she said.
In childhood I live next to a field,
A ‘bush’ that was always burning
Up in flames in the summer heat.
I don’t know where my mother’s depression
Began and ended. She’s a legend.
Her laughter is still epic. She was
A bride and a bridesmaid. Orphaned
When I was a small child. She is
Alive. Her throat is camouflage. Harpoon-
Ready. It is morning and joy is still
Young. This ghost house of leaves.

 

The museum filled with ordinary families at teatime

 

The future of seawater
Towards immortality,
Dust singing of sick birds.
My sister was the former and I, the latter.
The night is spiritual.
Your country is a haunted
Land filled with the
Proverbial thirst. The measures
Of longing. Of dying
To belong to feast and
The imperative. Every
Broken family is filled
With cracks in their system.
Their lungs overflowing with flame like a
Fireplace in a mansion.
I don’t know whether
This shoreline will still
Be here in a decade. I’m thinking of the wind.
Feasting my eyes on gulls.
It’s beautiful out here.
The singing geography of
Here reminds me of
Alice in her wonderland.
A word like ‘emphasis’.

I am a woman hard at
Work. Sunday means church but ‘Buddha’
And me sit outside.
He is nearly three years
Old. Daddy and the washed out weather-eye,
His father, my brother,
Went to church early
This morning. There is dirt under
His fingernails. The mirth
Of air is in his lungs.
He is my morning flame.
He is my scribbled knight.
He brings me thanksgiving. He does
Not belong to the bonfire
World of men yet. I kiss
His wrinkled feet and hands.
Coal for eyes. Foal legs.
In his hands he holds the ripples of
An autumn leaf. His lips are
Moths’ wings. Tongue fluid
And slack chewing gum.
Chewing, chewing between grass, far
Off clouds and two kites.

 

When it comes to transformations of the intellect

 

I hate hospitals. Dad
Is there recuperating
From an illness. His leg
Could be amputated.
We took him to the
Emergency unit on a
Saturday morning. It
Feels as if something is missing.
Daddy is not here. It
Feels as if winter is upon
Us once more. Dad is not
Here. I hate hospitals.
Beds folded down with their
Neat hospital corners.
A leaf has fallen from
A tree defying gravity.
The wind catches in
My hair outside the hospital.
I think I’m going to
Be sad. The stairs are empty.
The parking lot is full. Women are

Placenta rich. She is a
Bird. She wears white stockings
Of shade and shadow as intimate
As common sense.
Here you will find women
In uniform. The nurse
With her shroud and coffee.
The psychiatrist made of stone.
The security guard.
The nurse pushing the wheelchair.
You think they will
Make you feel better.
But they don’t. They don’t.
The rooftops of Paris
Remind me of you,
Daddy. Here the ancient
Sun comes. Evenings
Pinkish light. The river
Is wild. The wild is dark. Lonely.
Dad, I hate hospitals.
You’re in the wrong country.

 

 

BIO

Abigail George’s fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She briefly studied film and television production at Newtown Film and Television School opposite the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. She is the writer of Africa Where Art Thou (2011), Feeding the Beasts (2012), All About My Mother (2012), Winter in Johannesburg (2014), Brother Wolf and Sister Wren (2015), and Sleeping Under the Kitchen Tables in the Northern Areas (2016). Her poetry has been widely published in anthologies, in print in South Africa, and in zines from Nigeria to Finland, and New Delhi, India to Istanbul, Turkey. She lives, works, and is inspired by the people of the Eastern Cape, South Africa.

 

 

 

At the beach

by Abigail George

 

Bright lights in the city.
You had been made of iron.
Your memoir is made of whirlpools.
As vital as a tombstone.
I can thrive in this cancer ward.
Filled with the song of mannequins.
In the dark, I turn black.
Sea of trees I cannot fathom you.
Swimming pool once a myth.
Upside down and wishful.
I can see Jonah’s Whale from here.
Stars in the fabric of moonlight.
Everything smells of spirit.

 

 

Hibiscus and insects

 

Now I meet with disaster.
I come with bereavement.
The ways of water run deep.
Salt and light. Before disability struck
Do you remember?
The epic heights you reached.
The cigarettes you smoked
In high school. Boys made out of paper.
Men made out of gin.
You were unsuitable for both.
You stopped drinking milk.
You stopped eating altogether.
Anorexia they called it.
The elephant in the room.
You went to the moon
In addition, back in dreams.
You held the autumn chill
In your hands. Its journal.
There were the walks you took
Around the church. Up to the
Garage where you bought peanuts
And raisins with your father.
The cashier would not smile
As he bagged your purchases.
Your dad’s granadilla hands
He is in the autumn of the years.
It is that festive time of year again.
When you eat, drink, and be merry.
I will not be doing that this year.
I am fragile. A mountainous
Version of tenderness. I melt in the
Presence of children. No good
For anyone. Stay away from me.

 

 

Jericho

 

I am a cat person. I collect strays
Like others collect coins or stamps.
I believe in God, love and crashing
Into things. I spend too much
Time inside my own head.
I am tired of instructing my own work.
I write about the song in the wind.
It becomes my own song.
The song of loneliness. Of Rilke,
Of Nabokov, of Akhmatova,
Of Ernest Hemingway driving
Ambulances during the war.
I write about the seasons
As if I were a poet. The leaves that
Leave fingerprints behind them.
A pint of milk. A jar of honey.
I write about angels and goddesses.
I am impatient and angry
At the human condition and I read
To find myself because this is
This is what the river whispers to me.
Sometimes the road inside too.

 

 

BIO

abigail georgeAbigail George is the author of ‘Africa Where Art Thou’ (2011), ‘Feeding the Beasts’ (2012), ‘All About My Mother’ (2012), ‘Winter in Johannesburg’ (2013), ‘Brother Wolf and Sister Wren’ (2015), and the forthcoming ‘Sleeping Under Kitchen Tables in the Northern Areas’ (2016). Her poetry has been widely published from Nigeria to Finland, and New Delhi, India to Istanbul, Turkey. Her fiction was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She briefly studied film and television production at the Newtown Film and Television School opposite the Market Theater in Johannesburg. She is the recipient of writing grants from the National Arts Council (Johannesburg), the Centre for the Book (Cape Town), and ECPACC (Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council) (East London). She writes for Modern Diplomacy, blogs with Goodreads, and contributed to a symposium for a year on Ovi Magazine: Finland’s English Online Magazine.

 

 

 

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