The History of Waterfalls
a night at Kpatawee Waterfalls,
near the bond fire, and in the palms of history
in the belly of midnight, we gathered around a
bond fire, the waterfalls kissing cotton trees, about
ninety-two miles away from Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.
we are seated in a circle, seven in number— a sign that
divine things were about to happen.
a black man sits with his back into the arms of
the waterfalls, wearing a green t-shirt, maybe to
signal that we are safe.
and after a few pauses, the man
walked barefooted into history. he
planted the beauty of the waterfalls into
our veins, he planted the
spirits of cotton trees under our
feet, and he hitched the huts
into our hair— and the people in the
huts were at war, and
some hunting, and
some watching the beauty of birds, and
some planting rice on fertile grounds, and
some tapping wine out of trees’ vagina.
and a woman stood over his
dark lips, he named her Suakoko, and
she suddenly walked out of his mouth and
captivated a hunter in the hunting of humans.
A man named Kpa.
and the black man entered into the forest just as
the heat from the bond fire bonded into our bodies along with
the bleat of history dripping out of the night.
his mouth held a bow and an arrow.
it rushed into the center of an elephant and
discovered waterfalls between its legs, between two hills.
and they named it Kpatawee– to obey the strength of discovery.
It happened with them.
——-
My Body Is Made Up of War
After reading Mosab Abu Toha’s Younger Than War
every time i look into a mirror,
i see war-tanks and bombs in my hair.
i see fire scattering into my eyes, like
how child soldiers scattered across
communities during the Liberian Civil War.
i see soldiers forming arm-bushes into
the farms of my veins.
i see the checkpoints on my waist switched into death zones,
i see men dislodging dead bodies into the fossa of my armpits
i see my upper and lower lips speaking different tribes – a sign that they are
on a mission to reinvent the war.
i see my feet escaping from my body to seek refuge at
the nearby border.
maybe i should die to kill the war.
——-
Poems (c) Azaiouris Y. Zeon
Image: ChatGPT remixed