Five Poems
By Sarah Godsell
Sarah Godsell has been writing all her life, but began performing poetry in 2009. In the years since then, she has performed on various stages around the country, as well as radio and TV shows. Her favourite work is collaborating with other poets, making poems speak to each other, and pushing against the individualism we find in poetry. Her latest project in this vein is “Holding and silence”, with Vangile Gantsho. Sarah is a fierce believer in hope as a fire to hold against the brokenness of the world. With this, she is also a fierce believer in the building the world we want to live in, and working actively to dismantle the damaging structures of institutional racism and patriarchy. Her poems speak to personal and political themes, with hope being a recurring motif against darkness. Although the world often points downwards Sarah consistently chooses up.
every jacaranda
Every jacaranda
against every stormy sky
is heart
against hope.
Parts stubbornly refusing
to be swallowed by whole.
Whole gently licking and
holding parts.
Is cycle reminding us of where we were.
Where we are.
Where we will never be again.
Who will always be gone?
How they will always be with you?
Is shutting your eyes to the fall.
Finding the gentle cushions of wind
in the storm.
To the unbroken bottle
Light shines through your green glass
through the gap in your teeth
you have bounced off stones
chipped but unshattered
the roll of the r in your throat
the roll of the terror off your back
hate slipped inside you
your glass absorbed the bitter aloe
but you filter the thick dark
through your tears
catch eyes
snatch light
throw them together
into colours
too beautiful for such hurt
on days when you need to curl into yourself
you become sand
for some moments
collecting yourself away from the wind
when you are glass again the wind comes
to sing with you
you find her in your laugh
in the heat of your tears
Dear unbroken bottle
you were nearly smashed one day
your father holding you
like glass you in one hand
jagged edges in the other he threw your
fragility at you
it haunts you I know but you have
learnt since to become sand and
who can smash sand,
Darling?
For the guns
The guns crawled out of themselves
that night
They left their metal carcasses
The student struggled out of his coat
as the policemen wrestled him
He escaped
black
Black
Into the night
The police were left
with the ghost of the coat
still asking them
‘what did I do?’
The guns heard
They crawled out of themselves
leaving the police with their metal carcasses
They slipped into the throat
of the student
They thought they would find comfort
in her rage
This is what they are used to being fed on
Instead they found themselves
abandoned even by her
Caught in the web of the question
she kept asking the policemen
standing there with the metal carcasses of the guns
“How can you not see that you are killing your child?”
The guns wept
the tears the policemen
could not weep
Wizard. Witch. Sage
I am part wizard
Part witch
Part sage
Part humble
Part hubris
Part book shelf
Part wine rack
Part academy
Part stage
Part classroom
Part hand-in-hand sweat
Part hidden in footsteps
Collecting the imprints
Part standing on beach
Commanding the waves
Part heart of the march
Part inch above the head
Part sleep
Part death
Part umbilical cord
Part past
Part hope
Part you’ll-never-believe-me
Part challenge me, I’ll swallow you
Part hold me, I’m hurting
Part super-human
Part dancing
Part weeping
Part wizard. Part witch. Part sage
What burning?
What burning can produce
land in the flames
What flames can condense
time into blood
Pour blood
back into bodies
Push armies
back into their ships
What burning
can undo such damage?
