Beaton Galafa is a Malawian writer. He currently lives in Jinhua, China where he is studying for a Master’s in Comparative Education at Zhejiang Normal University. His work has appeared in literary magazines, journals, and books such as Betrayal, The Seasons, The Wagon Magazine, The Bombay Review, Bhashabandhan Literary Review, Kalahari Review, The Maynard, Atlas and Alice, South85 Journal, The Voices Project, Birds Piled Loosely and Nthanda Review.
Caged in a Flat World
The world can never be round
We could not have found all the gourds and drunkards
Swerved off in times of earthquakes and tsunamis
Or whirled to its edges by hurricanes
They would be dangling on threads of spiders
Praying for the tenderness in a mother’s hand
To lift them up from jaws and claws of darkness.
We wouldn’t have grown shells on our skin
After the blood baths from wolves,
We would just float in space
Our lives not tilting at the axis along with earth’s.
Or, our murderers would have washed down
To rot in deep sea caves at the world’s laterals.
Yet here we are, caged in this brutish world
Its ends so intent on getting us locked on its islands
Of war, murder and treachery.
With lies of horizons that stretch to as far as they can
And the end meeting the beginning. Where earth
Stands still.
~
Emptiness
is a dark cave in a river
that swallows scubas
with a thousand divers staring
at the bright shadows of the sun and its rays
hanging freely from splendour.
~
Lonely
in love
there is just me.
and the many kisses I throw at the moon
when it flees the night in space
its lips iced with frost.