vangile gantsho is a poet, healer and co-founder of impepho press. Unapologetically black woman, she has partecipated in literary events and festivals both in Africa and abroad. She is the author of two poetry collections: Undressing in front of the window (2015) and red cotton (2018). She holds an MA from the University currently known…
Stank with Sweat
The brave face I wear is never washed It stinks with sweat my mother’s and mine She taught me how to put it on to fit my wobbly bones to be the face that you would know My brave face has a smile it lasts for thirty seconds and plays back after a minute It…
Piece of advice
Don’t give feelings names Don’t name your moods Don’t give it anything that will make it seem even more real don’t humanize it We get more attached to things when we name them, but without truly understanding what they are, we make our own misery from scratch Because sometimes we find ourselves calling for it…
Mrs Gray
Mother dear whom everyone favors has a tree that bears fruits of labor. She takes the fruits before they even ripen to the waterside market to sell the way she takes children to the auction ground to be taken abroad to unknown households in Monrovia. She makes much profit and does not care. The seeds…
Painfully Healing
It is so painful to heal! For some reason it always seemed like healing was all about covering the parts inside you that laid naked. I thought internal healing resembled how you would naturally let new skin grow in places that were once wounded. You know the open holes that don’t really hurt anymore but…
Melanin Queen
Her hands by her sideHead downShoulders dropped and eyes fixed on an unknown prizeShe snails by in fearFear of pointing fingers and heart breaking laughterThose words like a butcher’s knife swimsthrough her melancholic melanin skin She wonders if Odomankoma painted her in hasteShe has blood for tearsShe is her mother’s dreamThat moment form the womb,…
Fixable
You are fixable Hold my hand and let me mend your brokenness. It will hurt less the falling and crushing You will get better at sculpturing your bits and pieces. I won’t leave. I’ll wait for daybreak and we’ll figure out what to do with all this sunshine. *** Link to the Italian translation
Poetra Ama Asantewa Diaka
Poetra Ama Asantewa Diaka is as a young and combative Ghanaian artist, living between the African country and the US. She doesn’t want to be boxed into the definition of “poet” or “writer” – she rather describes herself as a “storyteller“, since the term “encompasses all the ways she can tell a story” – as…
Greet Africa when you return
I greet you AfricaI greet you from Cape to CairoI hug you with arms of my sister from SomaliaShe implored me: Greet Africa when you return. At Southern Theatre we metOn a gray Scandinavian eveningBut the African sun still shone in her eyesThe effusive Nile flowed into our handshakeConnecting us in an…
I Am What Never Stops Trying
There is an unspoken evil, so proud and confident in this land— the one that took away our sons’ and daughters’ lives, made their spouses widowers and widows, their children orphans. The one we search for while peeping out our windows when it has already sneaked its way under our beds. The one installed in…