Teach me all I have to know and show me ways to savvy the enemy’s mind.
— to impress a suckling lad without his mother’s breasts.
— and shuu the exuberant assembly of vultures perching on a dead man’s scaffold 
 
Teach me to fold my nostrils against the stench of bones or theblood splatters that decorate our walls
as I leap across countless bodies, scampering to keep insanity at bay
 
Teach me to no longer dread the days when cords of ethnicity shred the veil of national unity
and the thumping sounds of little feet and happy faces become forgotten tales
 
Teach me to blind my eyes on our field of dreams that have become molested by bullets
as blasts after blasts scream like the town crier’s going
 
Teach me to wait for days when we can no longer breathe life from the pungency of ego 
and all we have to do is wake up dead in the huts of our fathers
 
But before then, teach me to number my pearls, to place them in the stores within my heart. For every pearl grows wings
that help them fly away from the path of a dead man

Biography

Adugba Uchenna Kate (Urica) is a Nigerian freelance writer and a graduate of Biochemistry from Imo State University. She is an adent lover of literature who spends the better part of her day either reading a book, ghost-writing one, or just trying to create poetry. Some of her works appear in the Society of Young Nigerian Writers Rape Anthology, Opera News blog and on her various social media platforms which can be accessed using the handle @urica_writes. She is currently working on publishing her first novel, even as she strives to make a significant mark in the pages of time and the literary sphere.