MONO ISSUE 1 PDF FLIPBOOK - Flipbook - Page 97
THIS LAND
by K. Asare-Bediako
This poem is pregnant with distractions,
a baby of dreams is conceived & a mother bathes in her country's grief.
Today marks the natal day of a black widow, full of pathogens;
a woman who swallows pain like paracetamol.
Chaos is a new song making waves on the streets of Accra.
It's June 4th & the reminiscing of history is smoking a pipe
on the roof of every house, leaders are faking memories
of bereavement & the youths are pouring out their burnt tears
on bad governance. A woman clasps her hands, curdled
around her head—the news of three Justices who swallowed
the balls of gunshot in their chest, crawls in her veins.
In 'Agbogbloshie', women are seen in threes and fours
doing their thing, another crowd is in awe, agape coats
their oily faces. Like a funeral, wail & outcry intertwined
are heard breaking the face of the Earth.
A boy grows up on the rope of hope,
but his Mother's land stinks of pandemonium.
Here, there are men who clad in phlox and tie everyday to
receive rupees with hidden hands...
On this land, bankruptcy is measured at the grassroots,
who beg infinity for their needs & bump into vanity the next moment.
On this land, histories are only celebrated to resonate the scars
of citizens who sleep in front of the Madina kiosk.
On this sphere of Earth, where democracy turns to dictatorship
in the palm of leaders, where grief evaporates into the eyes
of God & falls back as a migraine, this land is where
I tell my mother that this world is not my home:
We are all sojourners passing through.
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