After the Nigerian #EndSARS Protest
Diagram this. A country gifts you a corpse
for dinner, & grains of bullets to go with
your shame. In your voice, is a burning
gown of time & catalysis—
In your heart, to be human is to manufacture
the saddest song. With time, the body
wilts like a flower & shreds every unmovable
light. A radiant number of excuses to escape
one's self.
All the windswept darkness starts at a river. The
river of noughts & crosses; a fish-bowl of
unsweetened ache. When a people are tired
of dust settling on their lids, they long for that
which drapes the uncoloured path
to freedom— moving en masse to an estranged
colony. We move in transit, our mouths
the battered string of a matchmade violin.
When the cobweb commits idolatry,
know it worshipped & aided a colony of ants.
All I can do is mourn the only way I understand.
To music the shame of a country is to let
a bullet through the thick skin of faces blotched
in laughter & pepper spray
during a mass
protest. When a country becomes too much,
we tell the dark to safekeep our tomorrow
because that is all there ever is to lose in a
war. Guillotined trees & women heavy on
the sex they give the men
before the war drum is slit— in their rusting
they understood what it meant
for a country to be the bane refuted, &
the light hoped for.
Even children in a time of war
don't wish to be superman; they just
want their countries back.
________________
Prosper C. Ìféányí writes from Lagos, Nigeria. His works are featured or forthcoming in The Offing, South Florida Poetry Journal, Obsidian Lit, and elsewhere.
This poem was selected by Anthropocene guest editor Tom Branfoot.
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