April

Let’s speak gospel since jazz is so difficult.  
The clouds did not break today, I slept through rain. When
my foot sunk in mud you did not appear. You were tired, the
world had not yet readied itself, and the birds also did not
believe it. My friend’s father says he heard them singing all
day… How many years has it been? You appear now as
migrations. Miles away a wave breaks while you’ve already
storied histories for them. I listen for you while the heater
boils-up sunlight for winter’s end. Spring begins. Your
birthday arrives slack  
and urgent as buds. They’ll break and you’ll be
here. No, complicated horns bring new light, but
there. 

Tawanda Mulalu was born in Gaborone, Botswana. He is the author of the chapbook Nearness, forthcoming from The New Delta Review and is an inaugural member of the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program. He has also served as a Ledecky Fellow for Harvard Magazine and the first Diversity and Inclusion Chair of The Harvard Advocate. His poems are published or forthcoming in Lana Turner, The Denver Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere. He mains Ken in Street Fighter.

Artwork by Simone Hadebe