There is evil in the air
It chokes your breath in unexpected places
A playground, full of hard adult eyes
Watching, and avoiding, each other
While playing children loudly try
To shout the intruders merrily out –
One by one each parent
Picks up its child and hurries home
Away from this place
And no-one can say really why
The world became like this
Or when. It’s the future, and we’re there.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
She was a weightlifter
They found it unseemly
But she was a shape-shifter
Their disdain was a lighter burden to bear
Than her fate.
Slum lady. Carried mud and bricks
Bore stones and sticks
Firewood, rusted water in weeping baskets
The stretch marks of impatient thirsty men
Bunched up her muscles.
Owned by all, never owned a thing
The madams’ slaps, the masters’ secrets
Nothing was too heavy a load to carry
To snatch, to clean, to jerk off –
Each jerk. Very ordinary.
Today, when she steps out unto the mat
Under the lights, there you see
Sunset in one eye, sunrise in the other –
It’s not heavy weights she’s lifting
She’s carrying hope.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
My feet are stepping on me
My souls are brutalised
My grass is Thorn, apart
Strangers
Are laughing in glee
But my children do not understand
It is the foolish lizard
Who nods along wisely
To the snake’s slithering sermon
A child slaps his father
And corrects him
Did you hear the sky fall down?
Are you not ashamed?
If it is wisdom,
Why is it vestigial?
A short tree, shorter than me
Has peed on me –
Can I take it like a man?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 