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Writer's pictureZanele Chisholm

In the Poplar Trees


I’ve seamed the flesh of my daughter with ancestors’ cotton. Through her will be the rebirth of grandmother. And of her mother, eradicated, is the hymn of a new woman. I’ve seamed the death of my granddaughter with ancestors’ cotton, and as the faint taint of blood seeps through its coils, bathed will she be in the bleak melancholic of black narrative. Recoil the strands that slip.


I’ve stitched the root of my son with blood orange. His mind painting a different view from the poplar trees. My enigma as woman seen as the dispute between Adam and Eve. And of who came first. But I believe it was Eve. I’ve chosen his position on the rope, my father tied it. His father tightening. The ancestors, letting go.


Etched in the frame of descendants is my dissolvement. The apartheid of the black mind. The apartheid of my black body. Splitting up the roots of rotting crops, deserted spirits hang mangled by the ghettos’ barbwire.



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