We are honored to bring you two poets from South Africa for the first edition of The River. Martin Lochner and Marion Friedenthal~
~ Martin Lochner~
Martin lives in Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa with his wife and daughter..
You can find Martins writings at his blog Kalahari Blues.
.~
i pot bellied boasting navels
shiny round ball bearing stomachs
haloing out of diesel grime
over alls and silver buttoned railway
insignias
these long waxed pig curled moustache workmen
rotated their lives between shifts of day and night
with metal lunch boxes and coffee tin flasks
strolling main road home or to that gleaming rail
that provided a town’s livelihood
my grand father worked that rail and my father too
providing me with the means
to take that broke back-heart break scenic route
out of town for good and forgetting
until now
ii
coming back everything changed
and the fat men were now old and wiry
sitting on subsidized railway porches
looking on main road maybe thinking rail
going to that station i found it desolated
and the once shimmering humming rail all
rusted up and silent
on my knees and creasing my director slacks
i touched it and imagined the once proud spirit of it
corroding away as the blue collar folks on the porch
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Marion Friedenthal~
Marion lives in Johannesburg, Gauteng with her husband.
You can find Marion’s work at Bleeding Moon Poetry. ~
Dawn
beyond white
tinged with grey and pink
rain-washed blue
peeks through
fresh breeze dawn
punctuated by
sporadic bird calls
unwelcome sound
of city traffic
flips my mind
back
back
to a time
of innocence
when chirruping hosts
nested in
bluegums
wattles
acacias
fleeting silence
between darkness
and dawn
alive with joy
tranquil past
rarely revisited
pain of
going there
runs too deep
awakens
longing
feeds
regret
The River Muse (new site)
South African poets after a heavy spell of Apartheid dropped their chains and started integrating again with the international community! River is one of those individuals that embraced us thank you very much and good luck with your fellow editors with the success of this paper!
I changed my blog.It is Kalahari.blogspot.com
Martin Lochner
Martin, I fixed it on here and the author page.
yay! marion and martin are both good poets and lovely people…feel privileged to have met them and great to see them featured here
Hi Claudia…
)) I’m hoping that ‘The Trio’, by featuring two South African poets, will now continue to feature poets by country of residence and, in that way, give us insight into the lives of poets in faraway places… Submit poets of the world… submit! Looking forward to visiting your poetry via The River.
Wonderful idea Marion but you guys are the only country where two submissions came in from the same country. Yes people submit around the world.
They are not just good they both rock. It was easy to pick them for the first edition.
Oh and thank you Martin