Scarecrows and other poems.
Image by ArtNation on Pinterest.
Scarecrows.
this poem alters the line of Nome Emeka Patrick’s “Plot with the Horses in My Heart/with the Birds in My Mouth”
At the end, we begin again; scarecrows in a graveyard. The borders
of my town led into a forest, my people entered—
holding the wind with their teeth & got swallowed
in its greenness. I want to type home without my phone
auto-correcting it to hole. Maybe that’s it; everything named
after home bleeds. In the forest, something is always lurking
for someone. call it the night. Call it a poison gun. My sister’s
husband left for wood logging & returned inside a funeral prayer.
I laid on his bed, searching for home. When my neighbor shouted
for help, I changed my name to anxiety; my face, a flash of fear
& walked into suicide. Because the last time a man lent a helping
hand to someone in my village, he was named a brother to the
strolling bullet. Because the wind that breathed my sister’s
husband in a mo[u]rning song has allies. Next dawn, the wind
hovered again; swallowing 40 of my kinsmen into darkness, into
home. A vigilante man offered the kidnappers his breath— head
and heart, but that didn’t buy him the next day. The day broke &
the sky broke him along. I went back to my study desk where his
daughter drew his face with love emojis to gather the silence that
remained of his body & found his dimple quaking him into a
decay. Someone pointed one of the allies to me, I trimmed my
heart the size of fear and lined it like folds in an old face;
like beads around a teenager’s waist, seeking an outlet for my misery.
Five houses in my village share surnames with everything that
held hands with the shadow of their beloved. I did not want to
blame a hungry forest & how it feeds. I did not have eyes for the fire
inside the trees. yesterday, in my sleep, I peeled the sun backwards;
watched every missing family tree in my village break into my
dream. I cut the one with the biggest branch & my sister, who laid
next to me, fell. I turned over & a voice reading her ransom
note woke me; two million naira? I woke up searching for where
home ended—knowing my adventure would end me in the news.
Portrait of citizens blooming like hyacinths in their country’s shroud
“I do not know how to intercede for this place again without opening doors to grief”
— Adesina Ajala
My father taught me how to say my mo[u]rning
prayers every night, so I will return a believer
should my body break alongside the cloud one day.
it is his little way of saying, here: my next pace
could make me a ghost. where I come from, mothers
teach their daughters three ways to protect the innocence
between their thighs: run, run, & run. when a policeman
stopped my friend at the roadside, before they shatter the
wind with his breath, he begged: I want to be a(live)
& the officer misheard it as I want to be (evil); so he
pushed him into the emptiness of seasons—
backwards— inside his nug.
I hemorrhage-d my friend’s absence in the wings of the wind;
you do not curse the bridge while still treading its path.
once, my neighbor placed his two-year old daughter
on a month training to rest the national anthem in her
tongue & on the last day, a bullet shattered her patriotism into
a slow fade. I watch how her innocence, like water, strings
into melody alongside the anthem & everything went off
like a bomb. Our problem is that we love our country so
much that we forget we need it back to love us. I know
a thing about loving things: be ready to lose them too.
when my mother traveled, I waited her body’s fall
from gravity’s grasp like a partner to her missed spouse.
I bleed into loss like a snow, asking the cloud to quench the
thirst of nothingness caving my heart into a trench. I begin
the search for her diary: in my religion, we do not bury the
dead with debt. I crystalize my loss into all the nursery
rhymes in my head, washed the rainbow off the
rain so I could see the beauty in the darkness
clouding over our roof. because the last time my
brother traveled, he returned, wrapped inside his
janazah. we lit his body with a thousand
inna lillahi wa ina ilaihi rajiun & smoked
his remains into ashes with the fire of fate. Because
no one gets to question God’s silence. whenever I think
of home; I think of the already dug graves waiting to house
our bodies; I think about us—hyacinths, blooming in its shroud.
Prayers.
May the ground hold our footprints, not the bodies of our beloved fragmented by bombs.
May a child not lie at a street in Jos— conversing with his dead mother.
May the gaze of the sun not be blurred by the dust of bombs.
May the violet rays not die with the sun.
May the dove not collide with the archways of the night.
May the night not last forever.
May the spring not die of summer.
May the guitar not cry before it goes silent.
May the poet’s voice be a song crossing barriers.
May a two-year old in Zamfara not mistake a rainbow for a cyclone.
May we not sleep in fear and despair — forgetting to leave our windows wide open to the light.
When the light comes, may it not leak from our bodies.
May our wells be known as harborers of water and not tears.
May tomorrow come with rain, enough to flood the land with peace.
And if we shall sail, let’s sail on the boat of freedom.
