gaborone #2

iron
-y heat
coming down in sheets
lingering
naps in the sun
baking our skins
detonating thought
patterns repetitive
rotations of
ceiling fans atop our necks -

a middle-aged mother wipes her brow.
fingers on necklace
on beads
of sweat anxiously waiting
for a visa to a perpetually air-conditioned
somewhere in the US
they fire entrance permits in a kiln
and concoct embassies out of ash
scattering it on the globe
as if zeus lit thunder into their hands 
hot shock like
iron

-y
on the TV screens atop mama's head
showing black boy colgate teeth, a son
iron
-ed flat hot across his insecurities
while walking on pavements gleaming
he smiles
out the sun, colgate bright
white snow of amerrrrrica
gave soil to my dreams, yes!
it did
while my brothers baked
hot. flat
on the amerrrrican concrete
under iron
-y sun
so hot!
"i can't breathe"
still waiting on an ivy degree
its cream white borders
framed a body
on the pavement.

irony -
will you be humorous or emphatic today?
america night live!
mama is catching this episode
whether she likes it or not
on the TV screens atop our heads
black boys in front of her bloom
out their color
on home's village soils in the summer and their potato
skins,
on green amerrrrican visa receipts
on a country culled of weeds,
on an embassy television screen,
on smoke boiled out the kettle steam
of a gun barrel,
on a hard slab of
amerrrican concrete so

iron-
y hot.
mama's son smiles down at her
from above
like a hope like a dream like
a loss like a god like
a TV screen peddling air-conditioned scenes
for a land sweatier,
leaking faucets of ash,
than this little embassy -

irony
the giant elephant
in the room, constructed from its own
white tusks at the scene
of mama's departure
from sir seretse khama airport
boarding the first of the turbulent planes
to the land of the free

so she can look directly
at the son.

Artwork by Norman K. Lundin