THIS TOWN, MY TOWN, STINKS OF EVERYTHING HORRENDOUS

After Flourish Joshua’s “Sango Ota as a Microcosm of Nigeria’s Buffoonery”

there are things you can’t see or say, buried inside someone’s living room

& the deafening wailings by your windowsill at midnight.

a child escapes into absence & it’s for the town’s atonement ritual.

a boy lifts an old woman’s load to her home and he returns no more.

I’ve been here since my eyes fluttered open at the very beginning

& you don’t point fingers at anything with a name.

your laughter can only sound melodious in your father’s house

or no sound escapes the bars of your teeth ever again.

again & again, the housewives, half naked hurry over

to the tenth house on the street to speak hearsay until twilight

& their husbands— jump unto the road for 100 naira for opa eyin & ciga benson,

some spread mats and bury themselves over someone else’s land

& their children overfed by hunger look rather too fit.

So, my father says to never look into a calabash at the t junction

& always mutter a solemn “back to sender”.

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Poem © Adedamola Ruqayyah Aderibigbe

Image: 10199873 via Pixabay (remixed)