Ferocity of Grief
there is nothing ripe enough for survival in this wasteland,
only disaster culled from smoke wafting out of the bodies of
my countrymen. i often marvel at the brevity of sadness, how
dead comes out in a single syllable as if nothing as lamen-
tations never swallowed a home when a boy goes out to revel
and returns as a wooden box. my sister left us one day like
a mist and drifted across deserts and waters to Libya.
the next time our eyes would meet; mine held a tributary of
seas, hers shut like a dead language waiting to be voiced.
post-mortem revealed: rape and murder. home is a
fire we are escaping, only to be arriving at the threshold
of forlorn. how do i say city without feeling the sound of
epitaph on my tongue? when you say home, i am seeking
the part where mercy resides like a minaret and won’t have
to bleed or break an arm in the rubble. When you say home,
i am gathering together my heart, broken as fragile cinder blocks.
what shaped you into life may devour you like history, like home.
Wild References
(1939-1945) World War II
like us, the dawn was barely mature when we went to the war
we were in the metallic eagle, the first time a bird would carry us
it carries us the same way an orphaned child carry solitude.
this was the first time the white heads sat in our midst like brothers,
we laughed together like two lovebirds meeting again after a scuffle—
when a fire wants a part of you, it calls on you wearing gentleness
until you lose a finger to its mouth. we were at Burma now,
an explosion broke the silence of the earth,
and we were set out like lamps lighting a dark path, to dismember Japan.
guns in our hands—we, boys who still longed for the bloom of pubic hairs.
we fought and fought until bullets undid some of us,
and we came home from the battlefield with ashes.
we gave our mothers the remnants of our brothers: this is Alani’s leg,
here’s Uche’s arm, Maitama’s head lies in that box.
**A large percentage of Nigerians who fought in the World War II were teens, as young as 16.