Her Lost Language

 

English mouths are made of cloth,

stitched, pulled apart with every word.

 

Her life is mispronounced.

She cooks beef jollof rice for one;

 

braves the dark communal hall:

a giant’s throat when he is lying down.

 

He’s swallowed muffled voices,

stale breath of food and cigarettes.

 

The lift is shaped by urine.

The sky’s a coffin lid.

 

Back in her village, days from Lagos,

hills took on the shape of God,

 

scant clouds the colour of her tongue.

Now she must walk past ghosts who leer like men,

 

to eat fast food from styrofoam,

binging to forget her scars

 

are less important every day,

when words must match

 

from one assessment to the next.

Back in her block, the lift vibrates

 

like an assault or panic rammed

beneath her skin by soldiers taking turns.

 

She skypes to smile at parents

aging in their Sunday clothes.

 

They say more teachers have been raped.

A baobab tree is balanced on her father’s head.

 

When the connection fails,

she flicks to channel Save Yourself.  

 

A pastor bangs the podium, demands her Hallelujah.

She kneels to pray her papers will be stamped –

 

passport wrapped in green batik.

Pastor screams Give thanks.

 

 

 

Out to Sea

 

He left me twice – the dead man known as father;

first: taller than the waves, his hand,

gnarled fish, slipped out of mine.

 

I watched him walk ahead of words

still cockled to my throat, too small

for anything but bubble-sounds to form.

 

I must have known a howl would meet the wind;

demands for him to turn

might drown.

 

He walked towards the shore, then stopped,

as if a body floated just in front;

turned back to wave both hands.

 

His hurried steps denied the space between us,

body bent to pick me up –

my weight a movement of his breath.

 

Now, washed up on a bed,

expression lost,

he’s left me for the last time.

 

 

 

Eve’s Lost Daughter

 

Her madness soaked through clothes, the elders said –

a need to run along the hem,

seams determined to stay single.

 

Buttons down the back defied her father’s rules,

undid themselves. She wandered in the dark;

thread dangled from a sleeve.

 

Shoes stamped her need to climb the boundary wall:

heaped bones of women who had run before,

limbs chopped to form the shape of brick.

 

Her mother stripped her nightly, imprisoning in shame.

But naked she went out till elders

spoke of madness in vivacious hair.

 

They cut it to the scalp with jagged implements,

placed the bloody mess in flames,

as she went baying at the moon.

 

It shone with this advice, she heard it clearly:

Steal back your clothes and scale the wall,

or be part of its fabric.