My mother’s habits

My mother’s habits

Leaks and not leeks
I declare, mortally offended
by a young British student
and her English (as she is spoke)

I excuse myself, though
whilst correcting her mixing
her vegetables with the state
of a little wooden structure
donated to a poor community

My mother’s habits
tea-drinkingly English
of nature as it were
in a manner of speaking

My mother’s habits
a teacher-mother who
inspired shaped liberated
and decolonised the mind

She who (once) jested
over a weekly paper’s title
on our Shaik-like Selebi
Me and Mbeki come from far
said he, his face on straight

My mother’s habits
teacher activist and librarian
retired her mind now
discharged from itself
somewhere (and somehow)

My mother’s habits
knowing her leaks
from her leeks
and the other way too

After all, such-like
and the Oxford comma
is what separates us
humankind from the beasts
who daily put our women
and children at risk

I find a moment in a TWC (The Women’s Circle) meeting to tease a British student and TWC volunteer, around and about the linguistic leakage in her mother’s tongue, Feb 9 2012.