Crime Beat

Kobus Moolman’s poem of suspense, ‘Watched’, appeared in Carapace 76 and as Crime Beat has an interest in all fine writing related to the scary side of life it seemed an ideal post. Kobus is a lecturer in creative writing in the Department of English at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. In 2001 he won the Ingrid Jonker award for his collection of poetry, Time Like Stone. For more about Kobus Moolman check him out here and here. His latest collection of poetry is Separating the Seas. To read his poem click on
*
*
*

Watched

Something snaps close behind him. And he whips around.

But there is no one there.

Has he imagined the sound? There is only the wind. And the thin sunlight on all sides of
him. The shrieking of beetles.

He turns back and resumes writing in his black school notebook. Writing about a man
interrupted in his writing by the sound of something snapping close behind him.

It is the middle of the morning. Ants are carrying away the earth beneath his feet. The
cicadas are on fire. A crow in a coroner’s apron lands on a wooden fence. And watches
him.

Behind him the bushes crack their long fingers.

He does not dare to move.

The shadows of the trees and the shadows of the bushes take on the shape of an
intangible sky.