The JRB presents previously unpublished poetry by Abigail George.
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In a lonely city searching for Walt Whitman and Chris Abani
(for Virgil)
There are things
I don’t tell anyone. I blamed the sunlight
Secrets I keep to myself
I was young once
Ezra Pound’s Alba tell the truth. I go down to the sea
There are things to forget
I found a kind, my kind
A temple that I could worship, destination paradise
We’re somewhere on a beach
Under sunlight I am my true self
I am an African rising in the winter light
Musing
Please don’t forget me
My eyes, the hot potato with butter on the plate with flowers
My lips, the lull, my hands, these warriors
While you love another, the other woman
I am recovering, hungry for you
My sobriety gives me a warm comfort
It is cold
The clouds are made of plasma television
Don’t let me drink a sip of alcohol
Dear God,
The man with the knife in his beak
is gone.
Striving into soft and gentle
waiting hand. The man is given a script
I videotape the dendrite
It storms the experience
My father sits in the physicist’s chair
The tree manages the peach
My rival, my guru
I seek help from the church. This poem’s
matters have a deadline
I go swimming
My limbs have a life of their own
These branches
I have flowers for Sindiwe Magona
I read the poems of Kobus Moolman during this autumn
I sit at the seat of their feet
These fine intellectual eagles
Their country made of meat, honey and milk
My prayers are compulsory
I am guided to the philosophy of
the straight path. No utopian illusion is this.
I am becoming mentally strong
Look at this blueprint
This blank page. The journey within to my mind
I find order in solitude.
In Cambodia the anchor falls
off the shore, to the handsome wind that blows
through every creek, nook and cranny at the docks
I have reached my goal. The destination
that beckoned.
The world is a lonely place
filled with Van Gogh’s sunflowers.
I think of the man’s dirty underwear that his wife washes.
Oh how his mother loves him and his children.
My love has gone to war.
He enjoys his work.
Killing men. Killing the cannibals. The humanities motivate me
to embrace this planet and the rays of the sun.
I stare at his shotgun. I open the book of poems by
Dennis Brutus and read.
I find myself
on the page. Between the blue lines I find lies there
frozen to the touch. I keep finding glaciers and
equality. The personal freedom of Milan Kundera
there in the narrative’s river
All I have in front of me is this.
Is this diary of an insomniac. When their daughter
came into this world I immediately became her teacher.
To the man,
(I want back in my life)
It is never going to happen
He will not return to me
Years will pass and I will grow old
He will still not return
So I think that he is dead to me
But not to another woman
He buys flowers for another, he kisses another, has children with another,
makes love with another
She has a spacious house to raise their children in, their cherubs
She drives a very smart car
She does not care for feminism or equality of the sexes, only birthday cakes
She enjoys his hand in the small of her back
This ex-soldier who was stationed in the Congo, my voice studies him
This ex-military man
He was in the air force
One day I won’t want him back in my life
One day I will say, ‘I forget you,’ and starve my body of him,
of his memory, the memory of his touch
I want my life back
But a woman who loses in love has painful thoughts
Tonight I am inside this poem and this poem
gives me life.
‘In a lonely city …’ was the winner of the 2023 Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award.
Dear Starry Night, The Ukraine-Russia War Is The Interview Of The Week
Am writing
Green Jalapeños In War during an invasion
Am reading
Emily Dickinson in war
Charles Bukowski in war
This war life has broken me
Challenged me in war
Purple beetroot in war
Green spinach in war
Orange carrot juice in war
Bittersweet naartjie on my tongue in war
The divine matters in war
secrets of poetry matter in war
We don’t have forever in war
And that’s the truth
Blood turns into pomegranate seed
Truth finds exits out
We pour the salt into the wound
Bullets are like razors
Driven into the ground like a fever
The clock works like magic in war
The lonely dragon
and the dogs have skinny legs
I turn books during this war
into old friends
I call it ‘natural progression’
I sustain these books
as night turns into war
and day turns into hell
like relationships in my inner circle
Inside the mind of this poet
is a classical mind
a third World War
Tendai Mwanaka and Montgomery Clift
are men on a mission
taking the practical approach during war
They embrace art
during combat maneuvers
If the paradigm remains in control
and does not shift
In this blue reality
all the chairs are empty
Everyone is gone
Only I’m a captive locked
in this lonely place
I pray for serendipity, a son
I long for a song
Happiness and its pursuit
I meditate. I give. I hope
It will always be this way
because of the choices I made
That does not escape me
Now after all this time
Hours and and the silence
Maybe it’s supposed to be guiding me
I keep busy and distract myself in war
Practice good. Do good. I tell myself
Read
Navigate
Soon this war will be over
Or the illusion of it
Soon
We’ll still have the knowledge
of the wildflowers
Hunger mirrors sky
lonely in a minor key
War has a thin laugh
The woman in that mirror
her head is filled with starlight
Refraction takes place
Light bends
The Ukrainian woman
ties her hair back
with a black ribbon
The trees are unhappy
They have lost all their joy
The sea is green
The sun is lonely
An echo falls to the ground
A child is crying
An old woman left behind in war
is strong
Like magic she comes to life
in front of the journalist’s camera
Win or quit river phoenix
War is a novella
Suffering is a galaxy
Everyone has a fractured identity
We’re living inside the suicide
of a glacier
ascendance
mysticism
young constellations
We’re in interplanetary alignment
The paper is brittle
The sun is brittle
Cold and lifeless is the night
Inert is a better word
I blame the sunlight
The wasp found sadness there
This poem was shortlisted for the 2023 Writing Ukraine Prize.
Thirst
Yehuda Amichai
Marina Tsvetaeva
Nadine Gordimer
Han Kang
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Remember these names
Nadia Davids
Mongane Serote
Khaled Juma
Refaat Alareer
Although there are too many to mention
please, please I beg you
to remember them
If you have the time
Write these names down
Study what they have to say
They are writing for the future
‘Thirst’ will appear in a Canadian anthology later in 2025 and in a forthcoming collection titled Songs For Palestine: Struggle Poems.
Refaat Alareer
There is hope born in death and death born in hope
These are not empty words, you said
I looked at the exhaustion on your face
I thought of the flowers in Gaza, the orange
and lemon trees, the last olive you ate,
the last shower you took, the last prayer
you said, the last time you boiled a
manifesto in the kettle, stirred coffee
and sugar into a mug, the last time you watched
an American film, the last newspaper you
read, the last dead body you saw, the
last book you opened, the last time you
saw your family, your wife and children.
I have stopped watching the updates of
the Palestinian genocide. They use to
call it the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but now
it is a genocide. It’s become too much
for me to take. My tears can fill an ocean
and carry the orphans in an ark until
this war is over but there’s no end to a war
like this. Perhaps when we reach the end
of the world the war will end. Perhaps. Perhaps.
‘Refaat Alareer’ was previously published on Synchronized Chaos and Afrocritik.
© Abigail George, 2025
- Abigail George is an editor, novelist and poet. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, twice nominated for Best of the Net, longlisted for the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the Writing Ukraine Prize. Her work was the Editor’s Choice for Identity Theory and a Pick of the Month for Ink Sweat Tears. She is the winner of the 2023 Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award. George believes in the transformative, restorative and healing power of words. She also believes in bringing stories to the screen. In 2023, she wrote and sold her first feature film script. She is the recipient of two National Arts Council writing grants, another from the Centre of the Book and one from Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council. She is currently working on a short film on the daily life experiences of street children in Gqeberha. Her work of narrative nonfiction, When Bad Mothers Happen, was released in early 2024. She is the writer of fourteen books and a mentor. She runs a blog called African Renaissance. In 2024 she started work on a one man show on the life of Adam Small.
