Your head is a hiveyou are not sure you will survive.Women form a circle around youIn their eyes, your stories flow like The Nile.They collect themand hand you the cup. Go aheadthey saybut you hesitate. It’s okaythey sayand you receive. You raise the cup to your lipsand pass…
Author: AWP
Last Supper
Lay me soft on green grass like an offering. Take off my clothes one at a time like you are opening the Holy Book. Read the verses of my body until you master all chapters. Drink from my river of life Make me your altar wine your last supper. Welcome to my ecclesia! Let’s sing…
A Nation in Labour
The Republic is in labour Screaming pacing the political ward cursing the colonial midwife for telling her to push. Her head is spinning vision blurred mind inside out. She drinks a cup of counterfeit morality and blubbers a prayer of hope for the stillborn baby. The Republic is a headless chicken with a body that…
Fixable
You are fixable Hold my hand and let me mend your brokenness. It will hurt less the falling and crushing You will get better at sculpturing your bits and pieces. I won’t leave. I’ll wait for daybreak and we’ll figure out what to do with all this sunshine. *** Link to the Italian translation
Take me to the river
We say “take me to the river”but what the river wants is the body of a stonethe kind of stillness that can be worn.It runs from its destructive natureand we run to its healing waters. What the mouth wants is wetnessa torrent of forgivenessto baptise flesh with abandon. We sing of the rivers of Babylonand…
The Gloria/Ascension
My darkest moments are those leading to my success,a hesitation where I question – do I deserve this?where my ambition drains like a time lapse in reverseand I set out to seek a great perhaps through verse. Notes tuck themselves back into books,passages fold themselves into memoriesmy tongue reabsorbs every spoken wordwhich precipitates into a…
Forget (Arua) Remember (Pakwac)
Forget how the rolling hills stopped rolling and began unfolding into flatlands. You have left the badlands. Forget how the sky opened and left behind skyscrapers and scraped knees bleeding into pavement and how blood paved your way into estrangement. Your scraped skin already belonged to the streets and the wounds flowering on your body…
Unmarried
Mama said I atemy husbands.Seasoned themwith my saltyattitude andboiled them ina black pot onthe night of thewaning moon. She claims thatmy saggy beastsare an attestationto my disgraceas a womanand my mortarisn’t fit forpounding groundnuts. My body isa fictional tale.She claims thatI’m not fitto lay on the groundthat holds thesemen of myancestors.My complaintsunder the sunare equivalentto…
Dark Skin Blues
You said that I represented evil. The shadow of the night glistened on my skin. You blatantly associated me with tar because my melanin glowed under the sun. You said that my existence was a misrepresentation of beauty. So, you wrapped me under your arm like a clutch bag and led me through the dark…
Hypersexualization of the African woman
Fetishized My worthiness is measured in cup sizes and big booty. Integrity is dismissed and compromised. Body parts named policed and sexualized. They say: “it’s the sway of my African belle derriere the clumsiness of my breasts the fullness of my lips and the arch of my back”. Objectified by the media, my nudity is…