ABIGAIL GEORGE - POEMS

Pushcart Prize nominated Abigail George is a South African-based blogger, essayist, poet and short story writer. Recipient of two  grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg, one from the Centre for the Book in Cape Town, and another from ECPACC in East London, she briefly studied film at the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg.

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​Exodus or the spark of life is electricity
(for my mother and father)

​    He remembers hearing the words
    we are not couples that fight all
    the time. He looks at his wife who
    is not speaking to him. ‘We are
who we are’. And thinks to himself
    that the sea is tired. Perhaps
    as forlorn as he is. He’s a man in the garden. He imagines the sun
 
covering the dark water. Cold to the
touch. He wonders what the right
language of love is for winter guests.
How to make peace with his wife.
He wants to embrace her. Take her in his arms
 
    as if she was a girl
 
again. Brush her hair out of her
 
    face with his granadilla hands.
 
Forget that he is in the autumn
of his years. He wants to forget
that he used to do this for a living.
He wants to know if his unhappy
marriage is on the verge of cracking up. He wants to know
if she’s finally going to leave him.
 
 
 

​Marianne or song for the dumped
(for Ambronese and Marianne)

​    I make the telephone call
    even though I don’t really
    want to. I search for cool
    words, the right language.
    I’m searching for you but
you’re difficult to find. You’re
    not on any map and every
    road is covered in darkness.
    I imagine you (the golden
    breakthrough of you). The
    golden light of you that is
    only found in a museum.
    You’re a woman now. No
    longer a girl. Of all of you
that is so necessary to me for me to live
    and think of while I live and
 
    work in another city. This
is what I want to say. You’re so
beautiful. Yours is a rock
face. Twin flesh making me giddy.
You make me weak. There’s
a music school inside my head.
I think of you sitting down or
washing the dishes. Eating
a simple meal never understanding
how much I love you. How
much I need you in my life.
Your voice is tender and sweet on the other end of
the line. Your flame is bright.
 
 
 

​Leaves or the healing room
(for Ambronese, Gerda and Mikale)
 

​    I’m just this human body wishing
    on Paris. On the verge of cracking
    up. J.M. Coetzee’s daughter lives
 
there, I read that somewhere in a book or magazine or
    social media or article. Kafka had a
    tyrant for a father. I had a tyrant
 
    for a mother. There’s light in the
    salvation of the sky’s peacock feathers.
    My mother has dirty fingernails.
 
    Moses forty years in the wilderness
became my own. I am machine. A new leaf. I know
    how to restore my own soul. I don’t
 
    need a man, woman or child for that.
    If I had the money I would buy a
    farm where I’d spend the rest of
 
my days. Go tell it on the mountain. The
    The rehabilitation of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki after the war. The honey-blood, salt
 
    and light of the ocean-river that feels
    like home. I sing in praise of working
    women everywhere. The natural abundance of the woman of the soil
 
until I burn with weariness in my soul. The meadow is
    beautiful at this time in the morning.
 
 

​From the edge of the deep green sea
(for Julian, Mikale, Vincent and Ethan)
 

​    I think I’ve changed people’s minds
    and a few hearts along the way but
    of course, mum doesn’t see it that way. All she can see is this.
    That I haven’t lived up to my full
    potential. That I am not as beautiful
    as my sister who always comes up smelling of roses. So, I take the hurt
    and mend it. Call the threads of
it enigmatic and prize-giving. I’ve wanted
    love all my life. Never been greedy
    enough to take it for myself. I’ve
    been lonely. Wandered through this
life careless. Made mistakes. (Have been unhappy.)
    Frightened that I’d live life that way
    forever and end up with revenge in
    my heart. All I’ve ever wanted is love.
    This is breaking my heart. Can you
    see that it is breaking my heart with
    every word that I write this. As the
afternoon sun sets I want to tell people.
    Don’t take the emptiness. Don’t let
futility rule your life. Don’t let loneliness overwhelm
    you at the worst of times. I look at
    my mother’s face and all I can see is
 
    her tired, sad yet pretty face. I look
at my father. The exposure of time in the lines and wrinkles
    and all I can see is this. Me ending
up like him. Obsessive. Overly sensitive.
    Bipolar and weak. Drinking cold
coffee with a cat on my lap. Left
out in the cold tasting solitude barefoot.
Drifting. Cast out into a pink-salmon
    world where paradise and heaven
can never survive. I think of the sea and
    place. The lightning and thunder
of the sea on a hot day ruled by Alanis Morissette
 
and the Irish band Ash. You’re
electricity, physics, chemistry. Survival.
Instinct. Biological. Environmental.
Your memory is vapour. A field
with layers of snow. You’re frost.
Veins filled with ice water. I’ve
gone swimming in my imagination again.
 
    Away from you this time. I feel
endangered like the all the polluted rivers of South Africa.
    Up close what do you see, think,
feel about me. This is when love is not enough.
    When all that life signals is rain.
 
    Look out or burn! There’s a moth
    storm transfer of energy that is
    wasteland wilderness a-coming
    on a mountain. In place, seams gathering
    of blue light a swarm of place
and tide and current. Dark wavelengths
    of inspired-magazine hair. Coming
home from the sea there’s a window that’s open
    somewhere. A chill in the air. A draft.
 
I have to close it for the rain. And
as long as writing restores me to
sanity I will keep living towards the light of
doing good. I can’t love you. It is
not in me to love you. Forgive me. Letting it
 
burn in the end will cost me everything.
 
 
 
 

​Moonlight,or, the hive found in the supernatural
(for my mother and father)
 

​    Stability sometimes has to make
    room for hunger. The spoils of
    war. Harvest sometimes has to
    make room for another harvest
in spring. The beating heart sometimes has
    to make room for another heart.
    The ripe suns in this galaxy and
    beyond have their own sense of urgency wasting away.
    Dementia is found there in the air.
Its clarity is specific. It has the concentration
    of the perfect image in focus.
 
The spool under a wishful current.
(of a poet-writer battling depression,
battling on to find sanity but no one
speaks of this anymore). To begin with, you flew away.
Your charm scientific. Your heart is
 
factual. You taught me that. The river falls.
 
You fall. A waterfall in your eyes.
Determined hush falls all around.
The pool is logical but also sinister.
Originally it was wild there and found in a
rural kingdom cometh. The soul
cannot change. Cannot dream. Cannot sustain itself
without the hive. The swarm in
union and within their solidarity
 
comes the wounded. An ill feeling of hurt
as dark as sea. I take the stitches
of this ballroom masquerade party
 
inside out. I don’t want to listen to
this. Hearing my parents argue into
the night. I follow the vibrations of
 
the news scribbling across the TV
screen. I don’t want your glitter. I
don’t want your pain, empty vessel.
 
    Even ripe flowers find a way to exist.
    Pollen and tension has a history that
chases down aural pathways in ancient history.
 
    You were unkind. You did not write
    or call when he went to rehab. I felt
    I could not dream, not sleep anymore.
 
    Had to take the appropriate pill to cure me.
In order not to pursue a road to madness.