Grief Owns a Mother
grief, they say // is a wailing child / with hot rope of sea / seeking hands prisoned by snow / grief, they say // Is a child / laying in a casket / battling / with the first harmattan shivers / demanding for a body / consumed by the anger / of a labouring volcano / grief, they say // is a child / whose throat is a route / to desert / yawning for a breast / as deep as dream / with milk as pure as sky & / taste as droplets of love / grief, they say // owns a mother / with a heavy breast / a dripping heart & / a burning body / I look at the mirror & / and was welcomed / by a fading soul / whose heart is the passage to Sahara / breast as flat as palm & / body cold as the interior of a jovial casket.
A PLEA FOR SALVATION
1 your mother’s wail, throw daggers around the neighborhood 2 how could you sleep? 3 you hold on tightly to your pillow 4 hoping it becomes God’s garment 5 you shut your eyes 6 wishing the darkness that embraces you 7 will be a passage to your rebirth 8 your mother’s face is an old metallic tin in your father’s eyes & 9 he can’t stop lodging his fists to recycle her beauty 10 your siblings run into your room for embrace 11 their faces, a river of hope 12 where she often drinks from & be filled. 14 some nights are very quiet & you’d come out to find your mother masked with blue smiles 17 but you recognize the face like you recognize every memory she has had with your father 18 she is -bruised & bleeding with her tongue 19 every song was a different prayer to God. A different plea for salvation & you watched her sing & sing until her body singed red with agony. 20 Until her body singed red with agony!
BIOGRAPHY
Agboola Abidemi kaothar is a young emerging Nigeria writer from Osun state,Nigeria. A student of Obafemi Awolowo University. She finds serenity and joy in writing ,believes she can make the earth fertile with her ink and be the voice of the voiceless through her writings.
Some of her works have been published in these magazines;Africa writers, Artslounge,Eboquills,palette magz, and threposs.
