A Nigerian Boy’s Body Graphics

By Gideon Emmanuel

A boy asked his mother one night how  it is to survive in a 

country where sur­vival is a furnace & his body like a metal goes

 through it every time an invis­i­ble hand pulls the trigger    hard

 to break life’s rules and rejoice over behold­ing the stars of the

 night    it’s like calling the name of death with a whisper ( death

 comes as a shoot­ing star)  each bold flicker reminds him

   of the good old days  when the body was a safe cave

how time gallops like the heart­beat of a fugitive

                 boy is a fugi­tive      boy is a war    boy is an adjective

               qual­i­fy­ing odd thing of life  boy is a wres­tled nest

               wing­less like healing when it doesn’t reach its receiver.

                                          boy is a loan bor­rowed by womanhood 

   map_less as a country without laws   Mum says boy is a

 refract­ed light   bends to every stroke life lashes at him 

 Mum says boy is a tunnel    ray afar off   dark­ness within

   Mum says boy is a sour grape  life a vine keeper 

   to be grieved is to be pruned in sea­soned sorrows      Mum says

 boy’s life is a desert   he doesn’t choose what grows in it 

Mum says to survive in a country is to rebel against oneself 

is to be immersed in the pool of the country’s malady

This poem orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 17

Photo by Chan Hoi.