TWO POEMS

By Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva

Wednesday, February 23, 2011.

At The Graveyard

At the graveyard I sit on my father’s lap.

Where we can talk.

Of what could have been but was not.

Here he has many friends,

Even his mother-in-law brings him flowers.

Now I understand why he has to write.

It keeps him alive.

We saved him by killing him.

Because now he writes.

He recited a poem for me

And my mother discovered my frozen tears

on my father’s stone

Nyali Beach-Mombasa

A tourist caught a salmon.

The ocean spat out salt in fury.

As digital photos reduced the salmon

to a statistic.

Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva is the founder of the annual BN Poetry Award for women, the first of its kind in Uganda that promotes poetry. She also emerged top three in the erbacce-press international poetry prize after which she got her first collection of poetry, Unjumping, which has just been published. She is currently studying for a Masters of Fine Art in creative Writing from Lancaster University in the UK and lives in Kampala with her husband and daughter. She blogs here - http://bnpoetryaward.blogspot.com