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Adedamola Ruqayyah Aderibigbe: This Town, My Town, Stinks…

THIS TOWN, MY TOWN, STINKS OF EVERYTHING HORRENDOUS

After Flourish Joshua’s “Sango Ota as a Microcosm of Nigeria’s Buffoonery”

 

there are things you can’t see or say, buried inside someone’s living room

& the deafening wailings by your windowsill at midnight.

a child escapes into absence & it’s for the town’s atonement ritual.

a boy lifts an old woman’s load to her home and he returns no more.

I’ve been here since my eyes fluttered open at the very beginning

& you don’t point fingers at anything with a name.

your laughter can only sound melodious in your father’s house

or no sound escapes the bars of your teeth ever again.

 

again & again, the housewives, half naked hurry over

to the tenth house on the street to speak hearsay until twilight

& their husbands— jump unto the road for 100 naira for opa eyin & ciga benson,

some spread mats and bury themselves over someone else’s land

& their children overfed by hunger look rather too fit.

 

So, my father says to never look into a calabash at the t junction

& always mutter a solemn “back to sender”.

———

Poem © Adedamola Ruqayyah Aderibigbe

Image: 10199873 via Pixabay (remixed)

Adedamola Ruqayyah Aderibigbe
Adedamola Ruqayyah Aderibigbe
Adedamola Ruqayyah Aderibigbe, a Nigerian writer, resides in Ogun State. A student of Education and English at Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijebu ode, Aderibigbe communicates her feelings through writing. Her works have been published on The Kalahari Review and Poemify Publishers, Inc. She tweets @RuqayyahAderib1, Facebook: Adedamola R. Aderibigbe.

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