Poetry Festival in celebration of International Women’s by Naomi Popple
an unmapped dirt-track leads somewhere as it must
a child treads new prints in original soil that are blown away like dust
unworthy of the newsprint. spat into the world by the same ancestral bones and blood
knowing hunger, seeing death, breeding weapons. ignorant cousins; too close, inevitably
present nothing learned from the past. and in this once upon a margin, a child continues walking; at home in
the heart of darkness. a land in which there’s nothing fair so by default is? unchartered territory, alien
to man needs must receive its dues, and if it won’t consent to such then force will be the ruse. the walking
child, her womb now full with fruit spawned out of hatred, must nourish what is growing there for choice belongs
elsewhere. the earthy beauty of her flesh, unripe breasts and folds of once delicate, diaphanous skin are butchered
beyond repair ripped raw torn and stretched a spoil of war now conquered. and yet she keeps on walking
the zenith of the land she knows is coming into view. her voice is on the cratered peak and they must be
united, so obstacles will rear their heads but find their plight is futile:
a belly full of emptiness, a parched brain that needs a well
but suffering is a known entity. crossing borders and exploiting
boundaries without a gun? new, terrifying, vital. she starts
ascending, a pioneering leap. her snowflake, our avalanche,
for the arid plains must be quenched and her voice is
still waiting in a dormant crater. raw and unrefined
waiting for her vessel, her own rhythm, her own
rhyme, her own story. invaded flesh but the
only in the species who at once is self, but other
too. a living synecdoche. and still she
keeps on walking. knowing that she’s yet
to fight, silent battles in the night
longing for the rising sun
don’t
like apartheids fought and won
ignore
there’s still a long way to go
the
and a lot to do. So she’ll
periphery.
raise her baby near the peak,
leaves the voice she needs
to speak, in the hands
of me, and you.
Hope.
I am a 24-year-old literature graduate from Stoke on Trent. As a keen linguist and traveller, I have spent some significant time across the globe, including teaching English in Madagascar and Tanzania. My curiosity and admiration for the African content is exponential as is my on-going and fundamental belief in female equality both domestically and internationally. I am currently in Canada to improve my French, but hope to repatriate and settle in London, where I would like to work for female equality in some capacity.