out the fifth floor window of her El-Biar flat from where she had
watched The Algerian People’s Army open fire on students
journalist Josie jumped
28 years after her partner died alone of leukemia
16 years before militant Beatriz pulled the trigger[1]
O wretched of the earth
my partner said yesterday Malawi is headed Zim-way
different similar reasons
all fingers pointing fast climbing Rwanda
economychildpregnancyrape
O beloved Africa
*
a Vietnamese sex worker and mixed race daughter
heading out
the war had been won but little remained of the country
though the hegemon had lost he could still go home
38 years later trailer parks mushrooming
shanties of US America
and shanties of South Africa
inside suburbs not just edging townships
This I like too the cabbie driving us to Museu do Amanhã
Museum of Tomorrow But this is not Rio de Janeiro
*
fuel gulping subsidies surpassing $1 trillion in 2022
what a person can do in earthquakes tsunamis tornados forest fires floods
life skills taught to children
BelovedPangeawretchedoftheearth differentsimilarreasons
each piece at its pace allpiecestogether
ecocide in world time
[1] Josie Dublé, activist and partner of Frantz Fanon. Beatriz Allende, activist and daughter of Salvador Allende.
Salimah Valiani is a poet, activist and researcher. Her poetry
collection, 29 leads to love (Inanna 2021), was the winner of the
International Book Award for Contemporary Poetry in 2022. She has
published four other poetry collections: breathing for breadth (TSAR
2005), Letter Out: Letter In (Inanna 2009) land of the sky (Inanna
2016) and Cradles (Daraja 2017). Her story-poem, “Dear South Africa,”
was selected for Praxis Magazine’s 2019-2020 Online Chapbook Series.
Her audiobook (also in print), Love Pandemic, was released by Daraja
Press in late 2022. Valiani lives in many places and crosses borders regularly.
She can be found at Salimah Valiani – Poet.
the Decolonial Passage 