Read Time:1 Minute, 27 Second
— after Blessing Omeiza Ojo
I do not know what you're looking for in this poem,
but if you see it, it's because I feel the need to say
the truth about this home, about the lawmakers; quick
to change our anthem but slow to paint us smiling
on a canvas. Here, night walks into our rooms & walks
away with our bodies. Before now, at a newspaper stand,
I wanted to condemn the massacre of school of boys
but I didn't –– I didn't know who stood behind me.
Like a boy who the grave took for dinner yesterday.
The story was: he mimicked the head, & his followers,
with clubs, showed him the path of a thousand
laugh. What you called fear, I called reverence.
What do you do to a god who saves not, but kills its own?
Should it be starved of a kolanut & palm oil? Perhaps, songs?
I told my mother I cut my tongue yesterday, it's the [ ] new
anthem I do not want to sing. I tell you in this poem that
I wish I could remember my name, it's the anthem I do not
want to memorize. In a decade & a half of my life here,
I've sang what doesn't give roof on a rainy day. What tower
lies in this one which is reminiscent of a dirge sang to my losses here?
Sa’ada Isa Yahaya (she/her) is a young Nigerian writer of Ebira descent. She is a student at Jewel Model School, Kubwa, Abuja and a member of the Abuja chapter of the Hill-Top Creative Arts Foundation (HCAF). She won the on-the-spot poetry prize at HIASFEST 2024. Her works have appeared in Blue Marble Review, CỌ́N-SCÌÒ Magazine, Kalahari Review, and elsewhere.
