For Sizakele Sigasa, AIDS and lesbian activist, murdered with Salome Massoa, 7 July 2007, Soweto Where is she in this land of crushed stone? Where is she as morning dresses the day in the dirtied lace of tired gospels Where is she our sister Sizakele in this brittle dawn? White powdered faces ululate against an unremarkable sky as bullets tip the minute hand …one, two, three… collarbones crumble …four, five, six…
Here where sun chases starlight here in heartbreak’s wilderness here she is embroidering morning dew beading our memories in the red and rainbows of militancy
Here in this theatre of slaughter she is clearing a round of clay earth intoning a litany calling for a witness You say: it is not our tradition She says: is this your tradition to rip the pulse from my chest to deny a mother the dignity of dying first? You say: in the name of the father and the son She says: in the name of my sisters slain in meaningless massacres for loving their own skin A people do not survive monsoons of oppression only to savage their own kin.
Source: https://pickmeuppoetry.org/they-have-killed-sizakele-by-jessica-horn/
