STILL BORN

IKECHUKWU IWUAGWU

It is of futility a foresight

To relate the Africa’s giant future site

Her rind, six decades to be very soon

Had witnessed shades of pogroms under the sun and moon

It is heard, the voices of many seas

Yet, lands fertile with aridness is all she sees

Nibs of authority always ready to write

Lies become true, wrong becomes right

Her anthem, a gyre of gambits

Whose implication oozes in trickling tit-bits

Perhaps the genesis of her sickness

Was the Berlin 1886 madness

Garage sick from phantoms, ghosts, Benz and gulfstreams

Economy healthy from steady diet of rape and her-screams

Reptiles gulp down tenders to their stretch

Crowning the citizen a wretch

Today like a dance in the market square

Dancing in rhythmless circles becomes our share

Perhaps you see letters to be read

I see reality protesting, clad in red

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IKECHUKWU IWUAGWU

is an African poet and graduate of English and Literary studies. His poems won the Poetry Nook weekly contest and got an honourable mention, now in the fifth volume paperback edition of the Poetry Nook anthology available on Amazon. His short story was awarded an honourable mention in the IHRAF Creators of Justice award in New York, 2020 edition, His works have been published in The Shallow Tales Review (Nigeria), Black Boy Review (Nigeria), About Place Journal (USA), Flora Fiction (USA), Dissonance Magazine (UK) and Orange Blush Zine (Malaysia). A lover of the Igbo culture, amongst his hobbies are researching, writing, studying, reading African literature as well as engaging in creative and thought-provoking arguments.