Garden Boy   My brother says he hates them, says he hates the English like he hates the Afrikaners, same same, one umlumbi like another,   he says, and he hates the iron gates around their fine white houses, and the lawns cropped close not by cattle but by his brother,   by me, whose bent shoulders bear the shame of our fathers and of every black man in Africa. So he says. But on pay   day he waits for me outside, chants my name like one of the old songs he hopes to dance to later, in the shebeen where he’ll lay   my bad umlumbi money down for beer, for tshwala, for women who are not clean. I will not say no to him — he is my   brother. When we were boys he said no tears must ever mark my face when I have seen the mamba — he said warriors do not cry.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont August 2010