“Bibi,” was all the Swahili that your
grandchild knew. Here, in Babylon, married

to a banker, you liked it bent over:
slow and hard and deep. Our weekly trysts freed

you from a deranged world where, “Soweto
Blues,” was just a song. At fourteen I had

no words for it, but deep and hard and slow
made your hips shake, made you cry, made your sad

eyes flood. Bibi, you moaned but at fourteen
your pain and pleasure all sounded like grief.

Even now I hear, “Soweto,” and hear
you cry as you came, pressing me between

cum-curled pubes. If that was joy it was brief
in a deranged world euphoric for fear.

Notes:
Soweto Blues is a protest song, sung by Miriam Makeba, about the 1976 children’s Soweto Uprising and police brutality that left over 170 protesters dead.