To Catch Up with Hare
Her sunken eyes are ships
wrecked in a tempest of tears.
I have no hands miraculous
to help.
& if there’s healing in sympathy,
I’m contrite. Guilt,
like hell, has drained all.
I wish tongue taught memory
how to forget
mother’s eyes
how to sail unscathed
seas of sorrow,
undulations of drowned dreams,
as it daily survives flood of saliva;
& I,
after being bitten,
how to move on:
to catch up with hare,
time, grandfather clock
whose pendulum swings
to axe my life in bits.
Stranded Prayers
God’s spleen should happen
in sudden torrents
like midnight rain
to waylay marauders snarling;
remind rivers flowing seething blood
the soothing taste of water;
cleanse the smears
of blood and
brain spurted
by throats and
skulls slit
when night came drugged-out,
wielding daggers jagged.
*
Be not spectator to our persecution,
Pastor prayed, his Zabarmari accent stricken;
“save us now!” he cried, and
asked us to echo heavenwards–
thunders of prayers
is all we have against
ghoulish nights armed to teeth–
but it seems our poor cries
are stranded
against the thatched roof of the camp
like smokes from Mother’s cooking place;
Pastor said: “these prayers are rockets,”
so I also fear now
for the trembling roof
compelled to intercept.
memories also linger
of the flames razing
when the sullen morn
that spitted us here
greeted with massacre in its mouth.
Bayo Aderoju
is a multi-genre writer from Nigeria. His latest fiction work has been selected for inclusion in the forthcoming United Nations Economic Commission for Africa’s Decade of Action Short Stories Anthology. He has works in African Writer Magazine, Spillwords, Praxis Magazine, Kalahari Review, Ngiga Review, The Shallow Tales Review, Nanty Greens and elsewhere. He tweets @bayo_aderoju.