Tlotlo Tsamaase

Womb City

Katheryn

The system is bad and you have to be worse to play it well.

You're a chess piece. Accept the moves until you're the one mak8ng the moves. Why are you trying so hard to be good? I won't silence or criticize you, so be you. There's nothing wrong with wanting everything, wanting power.

I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous. 

Lindsay

The dark tide of Matsieng’s blood rips and tears me apart. I break against the windshield of the murk. Memories, injustices, and immoral behaviors saturate these bloody waters, consume me with their horrid stories from before the times the crime eradication system was implemented because each spirit contains the history of its ancestors and the history of horrors from time immemorial— the system may have abolished those violations, but the traumas still scream on: Men have taken children from the streets to have their children. It’s sick. These men, there are deserts in their heartlands. They’ve learned how to open child- thighs, their mouths spraying evil into the crooks of their knees, breaking the language from them. Men who still fondle the night with their wives hung around their necks. They make a shebeen of children’s limbs, turning their hearts into sorghum and dust, teeth nicking their magic from children’s milk, children who don’t know what it means to be the vessel for birth as death lilts at the cages in their chests. It snows in parts of them that didn’t know the sun. There are secrets in our city from ancient times before crime was exterminated. Terrible secrets. Scathing lies. The rage burns in me. In the womb of dark sin, the screams of innocent lives boil to a fever pitch in the ribcage of my soul and from these spirits I gain access to the ancestors’ unresolved trauma: I am the Black, the brown, the other being segregated and wiped out, still being stolen and possessed, that the color denies itself. I am the prostitute, the young girl walking through dark streets alone. I am the pregnant woman. I am the young man. I am the person whose gender is mutilated to conform me, to teach me a lesson. I am the liminal, the niece, the daughter, the sister, the mother in seedy hotels, rich houses, back gardens, sewers— meal tickets to sadistic killers and government leaders. Behind closed skins and in eye sockets, they bury themselves in the wombs of little children to carve their names inside them until their bellies balloon to the sky, their hearts nowhere found.

These are the men in power, people made of devil- skins, unburned by God’s hands. I see their past, in my mind, in my sight. I see them in our news feed, in our government, in our schools who act as our guardians— these are the people that make a noose out of Bible pages, wrap it around our ears and eyes, and hang us dry. I know these people with starving throats so full of fire; they carved hunger into the bellies of our people, took their children’s hunger to dress their dinner tables and parade streets and slums and now the poor suffer.

They are the infertility of this global war. It makes sense now: Evil obscures evil to maintain its existence. I am the grave site of the many women and men. I am the war zone. I feel the victim’s pain, the killer’s seductive joy. I have sin- fever.

I exhume myself from this waterwomb, dressed in all elements.

Reality owns me not. Reality is shipwrecked away from me.

I feel everything. I see everything. I am Wrath.

“Culture conditions us to not seek forgiveness from women,” he whispers. “That we do no wrong, that women are to blame for the damage we impose on them. Forces us to castrate our emotions.

The firm is touted for being revolutionary. They mine our stories to flavor just the right amount of diversity in their clients’ products which accounts for their sky- high profits. They mine the minerals, diamonds, and jewels of our very thoughts and histories and cultures that have been buried in our brains; the emblems and cultural motifs are woven with the dialect of our pain into their indigenous furniture designs, patterned textiles. It’s all the market research they and their clients ever need.

“I grew up here. I used to be so proud of how safe it is, how the crime numbers are almost zero for rape, murder, for theft. I’ve felt safe knowing my girls don’t have to walk around the city watching their backs. Only to realize that what’s bankrolling this illusion of peace is a fucked- up system that sacrifices us based on some AI that cherry- picks who will be a victim and who will be a murderer. To make matters worse, the fucking discrimination. Already you’re branded rotten if you’re microchipped, and your odds are already low that you won’t be a murderer. And without a microchip, you’re basically a victim.”

Why must we always die in order to be seen? I rise for all the dead women, killed for unrighteous beliefs. I rise from the fire, weightless of conforming, of fear, of unbecoming. Death has distilled me, has refined me into the purest of me: undiluted and impermeable to this city’s conditioning. I will continue to die and kill all that does not serve me. Without fear, I am whole.

I sound like a cliché, and I hate it, hate it when you always have to associate the woman they’re damaging to some woman in their life for them to understand that what they’re doing is actually wrong as if they can’t realize how wrong it already is. She’s a person,

Dinner date with the side- bitch, and I’m the bad bitch. Jan’s fingers cuddle the remote that will hamper my microchip’s recording of our time together, the little LED light is a smiling blue light— if it’s not capturing what I’m doing, my activities won’t get flagged by the police monitoring towers. I’m officially offline. Been popping pills since noon. Can’t tell the time, how it clip- clopped from hot noon to sin- cold night, from office to the townhouse, home of our affair, paraded by the hooves of up- tempo music. But I’m here, night- clad, skin off. Elevated. This shit so good. Freckles of sweat skip my eye. Deep bass sways my vision. I swear the edges of my body fray. Skin more porous than usual. Mind lifts, slips through the skull, and Jan’s milky way trickles down my neck— how’d I get down so quick? Fuck it, the universe is glorious.

Jan’s taut muscles writhe in his arms as he works the sommelier corkscrew into the wine bottle. Pours another glass under the warm glow from the valance lights. I’m dancing with the devil on my left side, God on my right, ain’t sure which way I’m tipping by the end of tonight. But I’m a motherfucking god tonight. My foot daggers the air, clips a vase, shards sing the fucking night. Jan is somewhere, his voice a beast. It tremors through my uterus, and oh my God, I’m on my back.

On the living room sofa, Jan’s head’s tucked in between my thighs, lips whispering to my lips, drives me heaven- high, tongue changes gear, strokes the G- spot, revs my heart. The night pushes my head back, and through the windows, it shows me the dark sky’s broken into splinters of glittering stars.

 mind is racing, racing out of me, out of time. Light shimmies, buries into my sight.

I could be dying, but my orgasm straddles the constellation’s reality. Husband only likes the devil in me. Not the sad. Not the clingy. Just the glitz and sin, the woman he fell in love with, cremated in marriage, exhumed by my lover. Vision sways, swimming in and out of my body. Lover stands, muscles licked by light. Walks to the glass table, skinny whites as its centerpiece. The moon’s dead, caked and crusted into powdered stone; Jan rakes his face through it, inhales the crisp pulverized bone. Exhales. Swipes tongue along teeth’s edge. Kisses me, I suck him high. He draws me one line. Guides my face. Nose slips some powdered moon into me. I skid into death’s lane, smoke my lover high. I am his cigar, his lips rope around my orgasm. Cigarette sex. I love this man. Death tastes delicious, so another line. Palms to skull, I try to hold my mind in, but it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone with God or the devil. The music’s dancing, the room is shaking, gravity eclipses my entire being. Murdered the pain, I’m so numb, I’m invincible, I could kill a bitch. The music scratches, my soul stirs.

“I never wanted shame or guilt to silence my truth. Fear destroys people. The world tells us to bury our emotions, use masculinity as a weapon. I wanted to be both strong and soft, but . . . I struggled.”

I wish they’d stop seeing me as a woman, and maybe then I’d be free to be what I want.

So what if I was a man before I got transplanted into this body? Is it really that bad? And aren’t souls genderless?

—Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi

For death and truth are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them. And truth is like death in that it kills. When I killed I did it with truth not with a knife. That is why they are afraid and in a hurry to execute me. They do not fear my knife. It is my truth which frightens them. This fearful truth gives me great strength. It protects me from fearing death, or life, or hunger, or nakedness, or destruction. It is this fearful truth which prevents me from fearing the brutality of rulers and policemen.

He said to the police, “Don’t let her go. She’s a criminal, a killer.”

And they asked me, “Is what he says true?”

“I am a killer, but I’ve committed no crime. Like you, I kill only criminals.”

“But he is a prince, and a hero. He’s not a criminal.”

“For me the feats of kings and princes are no more than crimes, for I do not see things the way you do.”

“You are a criminal,” they said, “and your mother is a criminal.”

“My mother was not a criminal. No woman can be a criminal. To be a criminal one must be a man.”

“Now look here, what is this that you are saying?” 

"I am saying that you are criminals, all of you: the fathers, the uncles, the husbands, the pimps, the lawyers, the doctors, the journalists, and all men of all professions.”

They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.”

“I am speaking the truth. And truth is savage and dangerous.”

This was a real slow burn for me. I think their marketing department sold it short because I did 

 get “Handmaids Tale” and whatever futuristic bend they were adding to it, and I think that sold it short. I felt like there was 

 world building for a book I didn’t get the sense had a sequel or prequel planned, and often it was at the expense of the plot, which actually had a really interesting direction. I was really interested in a character that was not necessarily likeable or traditionally sympathetic and am curious to read more from this author for that angle alone. There was so much to like about this but I don’t know if as a mood reader it wasn’t the right time for me or if this is another one of those “it would make more sense if I had kids” stories, but this book and I missed our connection. I would absolutely pick up the next book by this author without hesitation though because there were BONES in this book for sure. 

Apiecalypse Jen

This was a real slow burn for me. I think their marketing department sold it short because I did not get “Handmaids Tale” and whatever futuristic bend they were adding to it, and I think that sold it short. I felt like there was so much world building for a book I didn’t get the sense had a sequel or prequel planned, and often it was at the expense of the plot, which actually had a really interesting direction. I was really interested in a character that was not necessarily likeable or traditionally sympathetic and am curious to read more from this author for that angle alone. There was so much to like about this but I don’t know if as a mood reader it wasn’t the right time for me or if this is another one of those “it would make more sense if I had kids” stories, but this book and I missed our connection. I would absolutely pick up the next book by this author without hesitation though because there were BONES in this book for sure. 

After taking part in just about every goodreads giveaway possible, I finally got approved for the audio from NetGalley. I love the cover, and I really wanted to dig into this one.

Unfortunately, this may have arrived to me at just the wrong time or something, or perhaps not. It just didn’t grip me, didn’t work.

I sadly found the main character to be incredibly unlikable. So even with her living in and through trauma, there isn’t necessarily enough for me to grab onto to care. For me, adultery just turns me off to pretty much anything you could possibly say, so although it’s about her having control over something, any little thing, it just doesn’t matter to me. It’s wrong. Doesn’t matter if I understand the angle.

With that being said, it left the story feeling like it was really missing something, and in that sense, it read as sadly boring, and even confusing at some points. I think the confusion was meant to be, in part, showing the detachment from the main character, but it didn’t exactly work for me. Which is really sad, because the snippets of background world you get are really interesting. You’re dropped into this sort of Afro-futuristic Botswana where technology has reached all new heights—people can live longer, transfer consciousness into other bodies, and augment themselves—but sadly these heights are still being used to further invade women’s space. And in this case, sadly their literal minds and memories, and nothing is safe.

C. J. Daley 

After taking part in just about every goodreads giveaway possible, I finally got approved for the audio from NetGalley. I love the cover, and I really wanted to dig into this one.

Unfortunately, this may have arrived to me at just the wrong time or something, or perhaps not. It just didn’t grip me, didn’t work.

I sadly found the main character to be incredibly unlikable. So even with her living in and through trauma, there isn’t necessarily enough for me to grab onto to care. For me, adultery just turns me off to pretty much anything you could possibly say, so although it’s about her having control over something, any little thing, it just doesn’t matter to me. It’s wrong. Doesn’t matter if I understand the angle.

With that being said, it left the story feeling like it was really missing something, and in that sense, it read as sadly boring, and even confusing at some points. I think the confusion was meant to be, in part, showing the detachment from the main character, but it didn’t exactly work for me. Which is really sad, because the snippets of background world you get are really interesting. You’re dropped into this sort of Afro-futuristic Botswana where technology has reached all new heights—people can live longer, transfer consciousness into other bodies, and augment themselves—but sadly these heights are still being used to further invade women’s space. And in this case, sadly their literal minds and memories, and nothing is safe.

Womb City

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