African Winter
By Mila Rose Bredenkamp
Proud fever trees,
lined like soldiers along the broken, cracked road.
Sweet bile creeps elegantly down their languid forms
as they observe
and form a formidable barricade.
The lady in the supermarket has a gold tooth;
it winks as she smiles at us.
She complains of the cold, scanning our jar of peanut butter,
her beaded bracelet clinking happily.
She says the electricity is out again.
We say our water has been cut off.
We all nod solemnly, smiling and shaking our heads,
and there is a mutual
exhausted
humor that passes through us.
It is with a loud smile and an orchestral laugh
that she wishes us well.
She means it.
The fever trees turn their gazes from the supermarket window back to the street,
where darkness has long since spread out.
They observe
hushed figures that scatter awkwardly
and pull frantically at the veins of the streetlights,
rip thorns out of the fever tree flesh
to place onto the road, in search of flattening tires.
"The fever trees turn their gazes from the supermarket window back to the street, / where darkness has long since spread out."
where darkness has long since spread out.
Tomorrow night, there will be no light on this street;
there may not even be light in the houses that line it.
But the lady in the supermarket,
in her singsong voice, wishing us all well,
reverberates through the empty streets.
And the pumping heart of Africa
stays bloody, warm and red,
an encasement of thorny fever tree roots
preventing the frost from settling.
About the Author...
Mila Bredenkamp is 17 years old. She was born in South Africa and is currently living in Singapore studying at the German European School of Singapore. In her free time, she enjoys reading, baking, sketching, and writing poetry and short stories. Her favorite poet is Sylvia Plath, and she hopes to discover more about poetry and read the work of famous poets. After school, she hopes to go into a field surrounding writing or travel.
About the Artist...
Katherine Chen is a 17-year-old senior at Hamilton High School. Her favorite medium is oil and chalk pastels. However, she also frequently uses collage and various unconventional forms of medium to express her art. She has won several Gold Regional Keys in the Scholastic Art Awards. Hoping to continue her art journey, Katherine will be pursuing art for university.