Two Poems by Salamot Fakoya

 

The Act of Staring

see her pride. see her dignity. see her carry 

grace and confidence in her hips. her knees adjoin

yellow baggy thighs and legs. see her slap, clap 

partitioned sags on her chest. see her move. 

see her feet grapple. feet that beat dunlops 

to the ground. moves that allure strangers and pull 

heads, hems and limbs to gesture - and observe her.

she is gliding gently over with her shadow. they look 

at her skin and her form. they collect bones 

to their brains. they think about formation and 

organs. they think about existence. they think about 

breathing and normality, and how she must be 

feeling. they think about the humanness to be

and away from her. see her glow orange 

glow gold in spotty proclamations all over. 

she is sheering activities of the market, turning 

down volume and occupying gesticulating minds

in autonomy. they look at her and they shift.

they clear atoms from her path when they see her 

being in the Lagos traffic, out of makeup. they 

decode her helpless, thinking that if she is 

quietly wearing her body, then she must not be 

going far. she, a criminal of calluses and 

canker on her mouth. her eyes frozen

in cobwebs of time. crystals degrading.

she's staggering alert and cannot see. 

they look at her now and then, until

she is gone. 

*dunlops is a slang for

flat, rubber slippers in Nigeria.

A Ritual

it's a cage rapturing my innards.

a can of worms. itching. I've never felt

anyone so gross. it's a bird cawing inside,

fluttering rapidly like a heart under skin.

I can feel the rash engulfing its path. so I scratch.

I scratch till I hold water. I scratch till dawn

 

till wetness makes into my slurping hands.

 

I've made a patch that weeps silently. this is red,

 

the colour of rage oozing. how do I 

 

keep the flames from eating on? It's

outstanding to think we must dissipate the rage

 

that wants things to disappear. It's been with

 

since childhood, in tosses of midnight music

 

invoked by smaller beings. There's a calling 

 

for equal lives, but I'm not listening. Rage must continue

after all I'm the one with the ember heart &

disposing of dead bodies. It's why I kill in the first place.

I clap with all that fire & all that energy.

Yes. I kill

 

ticks and mosquitoes. I find beds in dark areas

& light them to dust. Thus when I feel

tosses and slaps deserving of insects,

I think of equality in everything. That, 

 

even if all lives are equal,

today won't be the last day of murder.

Salamot Fakoya is an electrical/computer engineering student living in Houston, Texas. Her poems explore ethics and morality, particularly social and personal dilemmas. She enjoys reading moral philosophy.