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