if you want to pray for my country, you
will begin from the Chibok girls & wander
to Sambisa forest, where bodies are
a ladder to worship; where to sacrifice
one soul means to touch the fiercest spot
on God’s tongue & snatch grace. but
one might begin to wonder beyond slaughter—
to set fire upon flesh with no reason; to see
a man walking & turn him to a walking dead
with the help of a flame; to see a woman
backing her soft baby & snatch her breath
with the body of a knife; to behold the body
of a boy & desire to turn it to the body
of a ghost. the news reaching me now
is that an image of violence has been spotted
somewhere behind my home: some female
villagers, as gentle as the hand of God that dis-
tributes mercy, were returning from the stream
in a calm evening when their bodies were am-
bushed & raped to death. another man with
a most dimpled face was burnt alive in Lafia
for refusing to recite a sacred hymn. this
is the kind of news we wake up to. the kind
of messages we gulp with the blinking
of our eyes from the television screen. for
my country, let no one think about prayer. let
nobody, born from the innermost part
of a woman, soften his heart at the affairs
of my country. okay, the creator, why
did you cast my fragile body into this dungeon
that looks like home?
–
Ayòdéjì Israel, a poet, writer, and editor, is a Pushcart Prize nominee. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Channel Magazine, Eunoia Review, Counterclock, Ake Review, Defunct Magazine, One Art Poetry, Livina Press, The River, Nude Bruce Review, The Bitchin Kitsch, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @Ayo_einstein.