No one knows that in my country, girls
are souvenirs reserved for tragedy.
While the nation chisels everyone to fit greed-sculpted
coffins, they feed rivers soft-bodied oblations,
which is to say, while the country props bandits
with impunity to maim and gash its citizens,
my country’s girls are urging ocean waves
to make their deaths quick.
When they spread their arms like Christ on the cross
and cave into the nub of waters,
which is to say every now and then, blood-mouthed Excaliburs
wing into villages—fragment men and old women and
drive girls into shrubbery—the terra of sarsens,
whose heavenly rewards magnify as blood
conduits away from human cadavers and deep in dreaded
woods, private animals of our lost girls become public oceans,
swum by dogs, pigs, and gworo-toothed riff-raff;
and in this country-sculpted grief, will these fragile
birds remain ad infinitum, for the country shall not come
to retrieve the wounded flowers dirging in favelas.
There is a pattern. Our girls are scared of the dark pattern.
The cyclone eating this land announces its coming before
coming, and it comes. It wrecks, and nothing holds it from cracking
the veils—what no one knows is that bandits have written to
our village—next week they will come. We know they will come,
and nothing will stop them from maiming us and taking our girls.
Now my sister (and other sisters) is on her way to Ajiwe
to feed River Konu another oblation. She’d say to the tumbling river, expect me.
I’d come sooner—gently, eat me. And my prayer for this country eating her children is:
Nigeria, wake up and protect your stars.
DoubleSpeak 