It’s not necessary to behead the yolk-haired woman
who dances with children in the streets of Eko
in time to her camera’s beat
dispensing food to shiny bodies, injecting antidotes to limbs
as bloated ox-eyes tick along the motorway
where they haul coal and hawk Medidi (by day)
Take heart, ife mi, and sleep easy, for eventually she, too, will hang herself
by the sturdy branches of the shadeless tree
though it may not be in my lifetime – or yours
Monsoons bring mushrooms above the loam, as if from nowhere,
like bright misfortunes from a single fruit, of the same soil
that bears the bitter red bark of healer’s tea
Old Sangoma makes her entrance. The accused is a child of twelve. Small bones
scatter across the floor, and the patients, unfit to see beyond the ore in their hands,
attune their ears to the clack of her charms
The doctor eyes them, her spindly arms swaddled in majestic robes,
outstretched, sleeves winged, gaping
like the dark, breached mouths of birth canals
whose scarry walls efface what takes root there. Fresh wails spill onto slabs
of long-silenced hungers, which can be revived neither by
the art of divining or of dressing a wound, only washed
clean by the brown rain coming quickly now,
chanting– See, see.
2025