ANDIKA CHALLENGE
Eating a Boribo on Oscars Night
You’re still here
violating sacred spaces
and looting in your loitering
And I am here
forced to ponder — silently —
the aesthetics of foaming mouths
Teeth crushing into cold supermarket mangoes
each swirl of yellow juice
tasting like the many violences of privilege,
the economics of ex-im, the sociopolitics of “local”:
A boribo from Tanga — yes, tastier
but I buy 2 dollar Afrikaner cultivars:
“Heidi” with its “heart-shape”
“Peach,” the “original old fibre”
the purveyors of good taste
have lined them up my grocery aisle
And I am here
forced to wander
consumerist shrines
— to wonder
Why do I still have the shakes
after all these years? —
convulsive, with tremors — beautiful
(the aesthetics of foaming mouths)
beauty —
the silhouette of dark nipples veiled
underneath a saltwater-soaked kanga
wave upon wave upon wave
turquoise foaming into white,
white crushing a dark coelacanth
onto Zanzibari shores —
and the kanga-clad pick it and pass it to you
oh, so
we were not extinct
our ancient ways are in there, somewhere
but hey, you’ve made a catch,
you won, pick us up, wave us around — trophies
and the fish ends up next to the mango
in the fridge at the supermarket
Why do we still care so
about your validation? —
Your annual prizegiving is yours, and for you
and I cry as though it’s meant to be mine
I wrote this poem in January 2016. Sadly, it is still relevant today.
