May 25, 2026

by JEREMY TIBOTH

Sestina from Joburg

after Maneo Mohale

“This is the largest man-made forest

not made of man but of man’s invading trees,”

says the beautiful boy in the green voice of god. 

Our plane tilted 90 degrees before it had to land, 

the sea of golden streetlights flooded my window and I whispered yes

to no one in particular, because they wouldn’t know what I mean. 

I don’t know what I mean. I don’t mean. 

I am alone walking deeper down the streets, I mean the forest 

of Joburg knowing this doesn’t make any money or sense, but please say yes

to a life of questions and climbing trees. 

We can live off and on the land

I promise it's safe here, there is no god,

because in Nama the word for Land is God

kuru its kuru ho ne !hûb a tita ke ra ≠âibasen

nomadic words that have to go back to their land

of letters lost in the large walls of archives, concrete forests 

where boys blow in from the south like rootless stemless trees. 

I am trying to teach a decapitated flower how to say yes

to new old ways of seeing. Yes Yes Yes

because anyone who lives here knows a god who knows a god

knows it gets hot in die /an, hotter in Kaiti where shadeless trees

scatter along the plains where nightfall means relief means 

reprise around a fire means a flaming forest. 

I want to jump off this balcony with nowhere to land

I don’t want to land

I want to soar on the wings of yes

I can’t afford the bloodlust beauty of staying in this forest. 

The beautiful boy says I walk with the dead as my god. 

They speak to me in shivers but don’t tell me what any of it means

Just don’t lose the forest for the trees

find the ground for the roots where those trees

tell you about a way back to your land

where only the dead know what your real name means

where the beautiful boy tells you the sound of a true yes

one that can only come from a benevolent god

who wouldn’t use the boy’s bones as flower petals for his forest. 

I didn’t mean to carve the names of the living on the corpses of trees

This was a forest of bodies before it was land

Say yes to the ashes to return as gods

*

find me

after Oupa Sibeko 

find me waiting for fear

find me forever shackled to the now and here

find me there where they found our bones in a desert of tears

find me in a town where time’s wounds need the most healing 

but everyone still moves on at the speed of broken clocks 

find me losing what I’m too young to know is already lost

find my body roaming these streets looking for me 

find me undone in a public restroom 

find me long enough to feel free

find me now before i find myself 

find me drunk and passed out on our mass unmarked grave

find me dead