Dagoretti Corner

included in New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tatu)

Akashic Books

These poems bloom and ripen, inquire and listen. The travelers in these poems are humbled by the dignity and generosity of their hosts. Many are called by name: Ghaki, Freddie, Mama Chela, and Moraa. But the poems of Dagoretti Corner are far more than catalogs. The poems know what it means to “wring mangoes from the tree” and offer them to another. The poems are peopled devotions

Yona Harvey, from the preface

Excerpt

I learn that my body is not for sex
when I stand in that lake’s shallows
soap in hand, beside another woman.

I follow her lead, how she stands knee deep
so the current won’t get in the way of her scrubbing,
the gleam she demands of her machine.

Ngwatilo Mawiyoo, from “Bathing in Lake Victoria”