Biography:
Genna Gardini is a young poet and writer based in Cape Town. In her Matric year she won the Douglas Livingstone Poetry Competition and came second at the Poetry Africa Schools Festival. Since graduating from Rhodes University in 2007, her writing has been featured in various publications. She is currently working on her first feature length screenplay as part of the National Film and Video Foundation's development program.
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Mister
Mister, you crinkle off my broeks You are as thready as a wear in the leather, until, with one fowled swoop of your sciatic, I am bucked and perched, my ‘bit chest fresh, But you like to crack the inside soft, I could slip you in, flaccid, to the side, I offer,
like a yellow sucker wrapper,
calling me precious
(or, precocious, I can't tell which
with the crackle of this cellophane hymen
caught snapping like a lid on your mouth).
puffing from the crook of your collapsed chin,
asking to "let me run one of your powder stockings,
cobbled, down my shin"
methuselastic,
hip-replacement-in-the-attic arm,
you sit me slap on your knee, how old are we?, say pretty,
pretty in your yellow dress!
(and, of course, you can guess the rest).
my patent white feet swinging wide-soled and sweet,
while one finger, thick and sticky as a popsicle,
is slid in to check if the dough is ready.
with a little time to spare,
and I find your tweed hands itching and
plying my two dumpling knees apart
as if to trace by heart a start on a sore that isn't even a scab, yet.
but it seems there's cutting in you still
(or at least, enough to slick one smooth slice between).
So I seep you all out, mister, yellow and mean.
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