Belinda Zhawi is definitely the poet to see perform. This is her poem ‘Temple’. Very recently she has been on Channel 4 ‘Random Acts’.
I was once a shut door.
Heavy, darkened oak.
My body did not belong to me,
like I thought it did.
My legs, concrete pillars –
feet anchored into the ground.
A red brick fortress of stones
tightly stacked into each other.
A head full of noise
like rain on corrugated iron.
They say bodies are temples,
entities made for worship.
Mine has known trespassers;
Heretics and thieves.
They threw petrol bombs
through the windows.
Even with me lit, licked in flames,
they still wanted to break in.
Vultures
that picked at my eyes
down to the socket holes.
Ransacked and fled,
left my mouth redecorated;
coated in the dry taste of sodium.
I’m still flaming brick walls,
flagrant and blue.
With a heat that reminds me daily
that my body still doesn’t belong to me
like I thought it did.
