Robben Island
by Walidah Imarisha
Water boils
Like
Black rage
In
African veins
Open boat
The endless waves
A desert a prison
In themselves
Coastline shrinks
You stare unblinking
Through bruised and swollen eyes
Drink it in
As salt water
Slaps your face
Like the South African police
When they broke
Into your house
Arrested you
Beat you
In front of your children
Blood stains
Where they play
Coastline hazy
As mist
faces seen through tears
You struggle
With everything inside you
To cling to shore
Like you struggle
to cling to hope
The lingering taste of escape
Slapped out of your mouth
At you gape at the nothingness
That is everything
The ocean consumes Capetown
Sharks following
The wake of blood
Behind slave ships
Tears sweat blood sea water
Sting and bite
Your broken lips
Who can cross these waters
To reach you
Reach into cells
Mangy as street dogs?
They have turned
Even the sea
Against us
One last look
But home
Is
Specter
now
Forward
Backward
The island
A mutation
A prison
Built over a leper graveyard
Even the trees grow
Twisted
A symptom
Of the disease
Colonialism
Your ancestors’ land
Now your tomb
Your own arm
Turned against you as a weapon
Comrades who turn
Informers
Under the weight of torture
Guard towers
Menace the beach
This island
Is always watching
No visiting hours
No commissary
No yard time furlough family visits
Transfers possibility of early parole
Just hay pallets on cold freezing ground
Stripped of clothing not dignity
Cells smaller than the kennels guards keep
Guards who bite more brutally than the dogs
Crushing work in the lime quarry
Food unable to sustain life
Letters that never arrive
Voices that scream never heard
Just damaged vocal chords no longer capable of speech
Decimated eyes no longer capable of tears
Faces so swollen parents no longer recognize children
They will do their absolute best
To crush you
Boot to bone
To break you
Skin burst open
Like budding flowers
To erase you
Your history slaughtered by foreign tongue
You know
all of this
You know
they will try their absolute best
You know
they will not succeed