Three from Carapace Issue 74
Marcia Leveson is the guest editor of this issue.
EDITORIAL
It’s such a pleasure for me to be associated once again withCarapace where the poems may be small but the impact huge. AndI thank Gus for a chance to indulge in some favouritism andregionalism, with two poets, ex-South African, now in Australia.This issue, it seems, is of mice and men – but mostly of mice.Perhaps because this year is the 200th anniversary of the birth ofDarwin, or because in the run-up to the elections some of us haveturned off the TV and sought meaning underfoot or in the air, somany recent poems have to do with critters of the smaller andmore ephemeral species. (No snails tho’!) And cricket of anothersort is on the mind right now.
– Marcia Leveson
Cover graphic by Chip Snaddon
Contributors
Mangaliso W Buzani, Gail Dendy, Gus Ferguson, Jane Fox, David Friedland, Chonat Gets, Godfrey Godbert, Nrendre Gordhan, Stephen Gray, Kerry Hammerton,Geoffrey Haresnape, Neil Jardine, Margaret Jordan, Leonard Koza, Kegaogelo Lekota, Benjamin Leveson, Mzi Mahola, Lionel Murcott, Renos Spanoudes, Immanuel Sutter, Tim Volem, Tony Voss, Adam Wiedewitsch, Josh White, Lucas Zulu
Three from Carapace issue 74
Uncle
At lunchtime he arrived
and sat in a deckchair
on the promenade.
‘Of course,’ said my mother sotto voce
waving her cigarette
‘his marriage will crash.’
Bucket and spade forgotten
I squinted against the sun
hoping to see him
throw down his newspaper
and spring to his feet
his marriage crashing around him.
– Jane Fox
*
Black Sunbird
Decurved for swabbing
the bottlebrush. Stays riverine.
For hours warbles zit-zit-zit.
Appears all-black. Piercing
black eye, spies you before
you see his: green cap, touch
of violet on throat, wingtip.
Probes nectaries. Head back,
swallows sharp. Out of season,
non-breeding, in mid-air:
takes flies. Not conspicuous.
– Stephen Gray
*
Skinny legs
A leaf
Walking towards me
Skinny legs
Of a dying ant
Under a green blanket
– Mangaliso W Buzani
