Little Perpetrator (3)

Abstract

Little Perpetrator (3) Henk Rossouw (bio) From the watchtower, you utter the suburbsI grow up in, ripe for the benefit ofwhiteness. A city hunched around the island.The prison within earshot of my bedroom,curtains shut. None safe, houses circlethe bay. I have been in hiding from mygiven tongue. You, the warden with a jobwaiting for me down in the hole, diploma cut up into a crown. Tasks include:electricity, genitals, offeringfree cries for help. My people have a historyof compliance & porcelain dogs.The prison at my throat. It’s not enoughto want to strangle you with shoelaces. Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 52] Henk Rossouw Henk Rossouw is from Cape Town, South Africa. His debut, Xamissa, published by Fordham University Press in 2018, won the Poets Out Loud Editor’s Prize. The African Poetry Book Fund included his chapbook The Water Archives in Tano, the 2018 New-Generation African Poets box set. Poems have appeared in the Paris Review, Massachusetts Review, and Boston Review, among other places. Copyright © 2022 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma