New Poetry by Abigail George

The theft of George Botha’s silence

Comrade, elsewhere
there’s progress in a distillate
that can’t be erased
from public life. “Man for all seasons”.
After silence I’m
caught between the wires of
the rise and decline of apartheid.
The decline and fall
of an empire. Tidal.
Its aftermath windswept
with integral bridges.
Out there cities plural,

it’s a landscape of graves.
The brilliant gone long
before their time. Comrades,
countrymen, countrywomen.
They’re welcomed
into eternity even
though they’re more
ghost than ash, dirt, clay, earth, soil.
Afterwards, I feel
a kind of emptiness inside.
As if I’ve been hollowed
out with fingers.

He's an atom. He's an angel
whose sins have been
washed away. His
hands are clean as
snow. He’s wind
and sky and rain
without a soul. The
forecast says that
he’s a weathered particle with velocity.
Listen, he’s a symphony.
A Masai warrior feet
in the dust. He’s independent
of the river. I can taste
his truth. Its light. Salt.


- Abigail George 2016

Abigail George briefly studied film at the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg. Some of her poems have appeared in and are forthcoming from Birds Piled Loosely, Hamilton Stone Review, Literary Orphans, The Writing Disorder, Toad Suck Review, Vigil Pub Mag. Some of her stories have appeared in and are forthcoming in Spontaneity, Hackwriters Magazine, Ovi Magazine: Finland’s English Online Magazine, and Africanwriter.com. She is the recipient of grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg, Centre for the Book in Cape Town, and ECPACC (Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council).