We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 April 2017
The Not-Jobbing Blues
I am jasper to your Cheops.
Peace be upon you. And also with us.
Hoisting her voice onto the screen, she squalls:
“I passed GCSE in 1986. My small boy
is now old enough to marry,
and I have never held a job.”
No sphinx before onions, I squint like pity. I sleep in Tunisia but I wake with the sun.
The world is all a-twitter but the schism is the form. Dear Lion of Alexandria. Dear Desert, o dear Ra.
The land of immolation, o the rising stench of garbage. The placard's dilemma remains: I AM A MAN, and yet,
what always ends as it begins?
I ask you this: Ain't I a woman?
Academe
It always comes
as a surprise
that I am
here.
Manual for Initiation into the Zebra Sisterhood
Try to avoid the fool
who mistakes a zebra
for a pack mule. That fool
is probably a jack ass.
Get too close and you may
get a kick in your nuts.
(So: grow a pair,
and join the tribe).
Benin Bronze
After Elisabeth Frink
Our face is one thick
gild, old metal screens
our here. Our now
reflects your now: an
oily light besmears us
all. Live matter slicks our
temples: we are sheened. We
take umbrage, bronze it. We,
this brazen bloc. Night flares to
light our way and sear our nostrils.
Unthrown, we chase our golden-
blinkered lover. Justice stares
as if to meet our purple gaze.
Clavicle to clavicle, we
shall overcome one day.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
