Songs of Anisha
Colors everywhere, black signs on mud walls
showing the passage of ancestors long gone.
Colors and patterns on abada wrappers
Hugging shapely buttocks
and breasts jiggling with the ripeness
of untapped juices within.
Maidens with jigida beads,
Swaying to the unsung rhythms of their waists.
Co-wives gossiping and giggling on their way to the stream,
of steamy nights with their ‘dim oma’.
Their muddy-brown calabashes resting majestically on their ojas.
Men walking the earth and living off their sweat,
They proudly provide for their women and their seeds.
Children dancing barefoot in the salty rain,
And then with such blissful abandon,
Hurrying for a place at the old man’s feet
For tales told under the moonlight
Against the sounds of chirping birds and crickets.
All gone! Skyscrapers everywhere.
Gases and fuels and chemicals
Filling our senses, killing our cells.
No more ogiri in mama’s soups,
No! too smelly rather sweet smelling maggi
And so we hear of high blood—this and hyper –that,
Austism-this and deficiency-that.
The children no longer listen to the tortoise tales anymore
Rather they sit in a trance before a box and clog their ears
Watching and listening strange sights and sounds.
Yes, they came home
And found it was no more.
Our great grand fathers were heathens, they said.
One man, one wife! Hmmm… I laugh in wry amusement.
And we believed them without asking questions.
Now a man marries ten wives, but serially,
Casting the old aside for another,
And this is the man that is civilized. He is cultured!
Nna anyi, can you hear me?
Our maidens were barbaric, they were crude, they said
Because they had soothing, healing uli
adorning their glowing skin.
And pray, tell, what are these knifed in tattoos?
Why the eye pencils, and lipsticks and cancerous blush?
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