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Joy Abraham: A Party for Fools

A PARTY FOR FOOLS

From the place we stand, the wind barks
In hushed tones glittering in scorn
Through a willow that teaches our mothers
To clothe us
Beneath wings graced with pores
We taste the texture of the air and pretend
It is calcium that our kidneys can hold

Civil is a pathway rugged with tar
A rover ranges with rubbers that forget
They once had its foundation as roof.

Grandma came visiting in the new year
Wanted the festive to pass so she could eat
The scarcity of beasts with a cup of poison

When she dies, she’ll beg a tree to grow again

I’ve been gifted her journal
Filled with blank pages
Of the ocean
In first person
Watching her history pour through
A slack uterus

A fool has called me to their party
In a place where thunder molests the earth
On the invitation is written

There will be much chops and crunches
We will roll the firmaments on to a baobab
Bind our bodies in polymer
and sketch a forest to quench our guilt

We will await the thunder to strike again
Do you know where it hides its axe?
We learnt it’s as short as a fool’s investment
To eat our children today.

————————-

THE MODEL ON DEATH’S RUNWAY

i.
Somewhere in the backside of a telescope
calories make a woman beautiful
The clapping of her buttocks scares suitors
who find refuge from her sweat
Until her piss makes them meals
Everyone comes for her
Enough to till into her wet seasons
Until they be too laden to carry her home
Like swift soil
So broken
You can see the world through them
When bidders protruded seeking more from her
Asking less of her
Their persistence shed an urgency into her succulent bosom
Melting as rage to appease a modern taste
Of what
An
          Ideal
               Woman
Should be
How to lease living to find a lost rib
How this evolving summons intellectual orchestras
Presenting:

ii.
Countless shopping bags full
Of pretty dresses hewn in a slaughter
Metals twerking and sneezing
Crossing rolls of whites and twice the rainbow
Enchanting as new born hair
Balls and sockets wheeling
Farting through a route limping into the sky
Like the onions the sea is cutting
A dish of red peppers, red peppers and red peppers
And bodies of beasts stale in her taste
In our tongue
Munching
About how to make her just who she was

————————-

Poems © Joy Abraham
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay (modified)

Joy Abraham
Joy Abraham
Joy Abraham loves to be referred to as a social leader who writes. She has presented her poetry pieces in the northern & western parts of Nigeria, and in Nairobi, Kenya. Her works have been published by Kalahari Review, African Writer, Space, and as captions for environmental advocacy. She is an alumna of the Purple Hibiscus Writers’ Workshop 2019. If Joy isn’t busy with environmental advocacy or community development projects, she loves to play the guitar.

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