I remember tasting the tobacco shored in your lungs, and you had the courage to tell me my auburn hair smelled of a bonfire.
I once vowed a dress I owned would forever smell of rain and my ink-stained fingertips would fidget – restless with memories, but now, when I cradle myself to sleep, my eyes are empty.
I no longer name the silhouettes that landscape my bare walls or dance along my broken skeleton bones.
I remember when my brittle skin was scented like my favorite library, but no one picks up an abandoned tome when the ink that travels the pages is nothing more than a smudge and ashy dots.
I am an empty teacup in a house that is haunted with your name. When I reread the letters you wrote me, shards of glass glitter along voids of thought, threatening to lacerate the emptiness. To puncture the silence where memories once towered like infernos.
Carol Majola is a trained ECD educator, business management student, self proclaimed poet and author, and aspiring entrepreneur. She is passionate about community building and helping youth tackle social ills affecting them. Majola is advocate for issues such as bullying, GBV, and substance abuse. She believes that her purpose is healing and that words written or spoken are powerful to break but also heal and she found healing in poetry. To Carol, the two most powerful things are Love and words.
When did you start writing poetry?
I fell in love with poetry when we were learning about the history of our country when we were in school, when whites and blacks were separated during the apartheid era. And I fell in love with how expressive the writers of the “struggle” were and how they used the art to cope with their pain and loss, to communicate their feelings more eloquently. But it was when I lost my father at the age of nine, that I wrote my first poem.
What are your favorite words?
I am a lover so my favourite word is “love”.
My name “Carol” because it means “a joyful song”. I feel it explains why I love music so much.
Do you have a particular style of poetry you write? Have you ever experimented with form poetry? What were the results?
I do not think I have a particular style of writing my poetry, although most of my poems are in a similar structure. They are more expressive than rhythmic though.
I love words and playing around with words and therefore experimenting with form poetry was inevitable. My first exposure to poetry was form and studying poetry. With my work, I feel that form gave it more structure and allowed me to experiment with my rhyme scheme. Although the consideration of my lines and stanzas made it seem limiting in how I could express in depth, it did teach me careful consideration of my word choice.
April is Global Poetry Writing Month. Who are some of your favorite poets from around the world?
One of my memorable olden day favourite poet together with the likes of Charles Causley, would be a South African Poet by the name of “KEORAPETSE WILLIAM KGOSITSILE” who was not only a poet but a social and political activist who lived in Exile in the US in 1962. I love how he encouraged interest in Africa, African poetry and the practice of poetry as a performance art. Origins and Santamaria are some of my favorite works by him.
Maya Angelou has always been my favorite, as well as Rudy Francisco. I have my recent favourites who I have experienced through social media – Yaw Osafo (KINGYAW FROM GHANA) residing in the states and Hafsat Abdullahi (HAVFY FROM NIGERIA)…such powerful young poets.
AConjugal Suicide
Floating, barely breathing beneath the waters, In a bottomless ocean. Drowning, for I sold myself at the price of trust I recklessly handed over. Sun rays cast between my fears, Water covering my stream of tears, My wails muffled in the deep, Not even those shoring at sea Can see me, nor my weeps hear. I am dazed swimming in agony, In a sea a path to which I built With brick and mortar with which I tried to build my home That now lies desolate and forgone.
From the Academy of American Poets, a cento is derived from the Latin word for “patchwork”. The cento (or collage poem) is a poetic form composed entirely of lines from poems by other poets.
Love, what is love? I tried to answer, but our language had been lost (and forgotten). So, love’s face may still seem love (to me).
Everything carries me (to you).
Love, what is love? I tried to answer, but our language had been lost (and forgotten).
If little by little, you stop loving me, I shall stop loving you…
If suddenly you forget me do not look for me…
Love, what is love? I tried to answer, but our language had been lost.
If I were a poet, I’d kidnap you. Lyric you in lilacs.
If suddenly you forget me, do not look for me.
Isabelle Palerma
Poems Used:
“Love — What is Love?”, Robert Louis Stevenson.
“In the Dusky Path of a Dream”, Rabindranath Tagore.
I sicken myself with hunger. If this was a physical disease, my ribs would be visible through a sheath of skin. (My rib bones so sharp they could splinter glass.) Instead, I waste away while appearing strong. I’d have carved your name on my bones, but bones fracture and break.
You took a needle to your skin, but this time, it wasn’t filled with an illness. You injected yourself with ink, and ink is my illness, my poison.
If you throw the stars upon the midnight canopy, a constellation can be found. In that pattern, my star is home. But this emptiness gnaws at me, a hunger that makes me want to devour my own flesh and cannibalize myself. Instead, my soul is atrophying with disuse. (And I pour more and more into myself, wondering when you’ll return.)
This isn’t a lacuna nor a crater. You have vanished for longer, but I have a heart that’s gone beyond starvation. It’s empty here without you, & I just wait for your return, sustaining myself on memories and promises.
April is Global Poetry Writing Month, and as a poet, I thought it’d be fun to start my blog by interviewing some of the interesting poets I have met over the years.
There are so many great word artists out there who haven’t been discovered yet, and I’m hoping to use this space to share their thoughts, ideas, and poems with you.
Isabelle Palerma 