At the Back of Our Minds (II)

Dear Mother,

You come in kernels of
sunlight and raw maize. I press them to my tongue
so that your voice may flow through me,
a torrent of honey. It alone speaks
my name.

Our classmate,
when she could not see another god amidst the
clouds, she was planted waist
deep in the dirt while our hands were filled with
stones.
For days after the laden rain she
bowed before the sky,
the flies dancing around in praise of her
epiphany.
And of our betrothal to War.
We now carry his plot of homeland,
our own youth supplanted by
the rising bellies below.

Soon, a new night shall cry for warmth.
With her I will share your
song.

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As the title suggests, this piece is meant to  be a  a companion/successor to the first poem I wrote about he subject, ‘At the Back of Our Minds’. To date, of the 276 schoolgirls of Chibok who were abducted by Boko Haram in 2014, only 57 have escaped.  One of the girls, Amina Ali, was found safe, with child, in May of this year. In an interview, she gave an account of her experience as a captive. I used the details of this account as an inspiration for this poem: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36653222. Let us not forget those who still remain far from home.

at the back of our minds-revisited

This is a piece inspired by  “at the back of our minds”, a poem I wrote some months ago to honor the 276 Nigerian schoolgirls who were abducted in April 14 of 2014 by the Islamic Jihadist and terrorist organization Boko Haram. Based on my perusal of recent articles on the subject, only 57 of the young women have escaped. 219 of them either remain captive deep in the Sambisa Forest (or elsewhere in the country) or have been killed. I cannot (and will not) forget them.

The sculpture in their honor features a tree trunk (its peeling bark bearing clips of newspaper stories), from which a hand is emerging reaching skyward. From the tips of each finger, pencils jut forth, the sharpened points blue. Behind the hand and upon the bark is the poem, hand-written in the same hue.

Media used: wood, wire, cork, newspaper, acrylic paint.