about 1967

Wálé Àyìnlá
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

it is a fact that everyone has eaten a part of God

before tasting the fall of man.*

there is a city in my breath

that tastes like stench. a mother

receives freedom from the rapes

of her master. her children are no longer united

they now have strange fathers

a mother prepares her children

for death. gunshots draw them closer

before dust finds an empty space in their eyelids

nothing tastes like having

your lover die in your embrace

you see heaven in their eyes

and remember that there is a place

reserved for you

another mother fights the wind in Onitsha

a soldier dresses her daughter for sacrifice

before the slaughter

a fire slides from the mountain

till it reaches the ground.

too red that she looks away

you don’t stare at gods

during a war, they are always burning

there is a fire

underneath her skirt too

she is craving for water

an angel passes by

silence descends from heaven

her daughter

is an atonement for peace -eternal

a girl walks into her hut in Nsukka

and realizes the poems on the floor:

a family battered into alliteration,

something similar to movies

there are similes, more of irony

than personification

she will wear grief like cobwebs

and will remember the lines in her dream

there is a prize for survival,

something similar to madness

*From a poem, “Denial” by Romeo Oriogun

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