I Am Human Female Coloured Black Breathing bits of my sensibilities Let. Me. Be. Let Me feel Me and breathe Me And sip my beautiful self Taste my mind intoxicated by My thoughts Let Me enjoy Me And know how beautiful I can be The brown of my skin… a rainbow of brown Red yellow…
My Mother in Three Photographs
Her face looks out flawless her sexuality electric in a mini dress and sheer satin stockings the girls of the 1960s beautiful beyond belief. She is looking through the camera like her space is here and beyond enchanting and enchanted by the times when the dreams of freedom were young the fortunes of Uganda hot…
Roberta Turkson – Robbie Ajjuah Fantini
Roberta Turkson’s career in poetry started in 2011, as a way to drive the pain off her chest, after failing to fulfil the fondest dream of having her own traditional Ghanaian restaurant in Nashville. “With lots of time on my hands and pain in my heart, I took to writing which turned out to be…
The wife of the born-again Christian husband in Kampala
The faithful wife of a born-again Christian husband is a baffled woman. She will slap her cheeks with a Bible So that she doesn’t laugh at the jokes of a pastor. After all her husband is supposed to provide all the humor that is necessary. She will hold her aching thighs together and pray for…
Black Photosynthesis
Deforestation isn’t just the cutting down of trees. It’s the cutting down of black women’s self esteem. It’s when you turn us into pretty furniture to sit on. Make textbooks out of our bodies And then use our broken spines to bind them It’s when you pull us out of the earth We were so…
Good Morning Kampala
Clouds are racing above Kampala Sunrise peeps from the head of its hilly protrusions. Suddenly, rapid gun fire exchange invades our atmosphere Heavy feet scamper to find footing on our broken roads “Hooligans are demanding for change!” They say. Arrows of rain armed with hail stones join in the human pelting But you Rain where…
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…
L.I.F.E.
Life’s like living just at the edge of a knife Incredible, yet sometimes one’s choice is not counted Fear, one’s likely to succumb to courage’s rarely remembered Evidently, life’s not how long you live but how well you thrive Life sometimes wants to be a dictator It can twirl and whirl without one on hold…
Nya Ku Toc
It’s sarcastic how girls at seventeen, Who should have been singing, Baba black sheep or father Abraham, Are singing songs like, He has played me, he has played me. Trashed my heart, took my virginity. And so forth, and so on. And, and you wonder where kids learn songs. This poem was inspired by…