Palapala Magazine: The Poetry of Minna Salami

How I Fit Kill a Good Man
Anoda person ghost dun enta ma bodi
I no know iym name
But I know say na man
For de way I feel dey burn in front of my tighs for night
See e be like say…
For morning wen I wake see light shine for window
Before I go reach my work for oga compound
I look my face inside mirror
My hair wey plait like snail
My teeth wey shine with fine fine gap in middle
My breasts wey flesh soft like pomo
My ynash wey round and come brown like coconut
And I for sure, dat de person in my front is woman

Na for night
When de only ting I fit see be de inside of my eye
De wite wey vex pass de moon
De red wey sting more dann mosquito
Na for night
Dat I know say na mans ghost wey dun enter ma bodi
I wan know ihm name
For wen e tell me make I take shotgun
Make I go for inside compound
Make I put pillow for my oga face
Make I pull shotgun
Make I kill am
Make I take ihm money
I wan tell dem dat no be me
Na dys person
Wey enter my body
Na ihm, wey go kill good man

Indoctrinated Minds
Harbour the shores of this time like sunset
They have since proven to be shadows of an atrocity
Hand in hand monsters like an iron fist in velvet gloves
Some have been washed ashore, forgotten
While wonder fills those who mourned indoctrinated minds
Pastors and reverends with answers not questions, I’m a question?
Highbrow winds have washed off those affirmations
A blowing set is born
not plagued by the new mind

The Boy With Nine Eyes
When I wondered what his heart hurt he haunted me like cobwebs
The boy with nine eyes
I would not entangle myself
Despite pressure in my stomach like a wet handkerchief
Full of withered memories and bended branches
Something like glue under my armpits
I say words that cut me open
And begin my escape from womb to tongue
When did childhood give birth to me?
In a soft dream
By the flame of a candle
After I made love to miracles?
I could only describe him Wisdom
With soft pencil strokes outlining
What I drew from nothing
I shouted,
Prayed I did, like fire to red
And it shook me open like a deck of cards
Spade to heart
Strangle my fear
Let me burn too
As mother of the Makoko boy

Lost Potential
From far away you remind me of a moonlit hill.
There on its steepest angle, you possess a dreamlike beauty that glows with infinite wisdom. You smile back at me warmly, urging me to ascend you.
As I approach the horizon your mangrove roots coil around my feet keeping me coasted like slave chains. I can't climb you this time either.
Africa, I try to desire you.
In my dreams of you I stand in front of a gold gate with a bronze key in my fist. Your people urge me to unlock you but I'm paralysed. Their faces like rejected orphans confront me. However, unlike me they don't know that the shimmer is an illusion. Behind these gates fire awaits.
Africa, I try to trust you.

I try to trust you but how can I when you don't trust yourself? And how could you, when the cause of your demise is also the source of your birth. When the artillery arrived you did not know you'd exchanged it for your dignity. You did not know you were being impregnated with a bastard child. An elephant whose trunk protrudes your navel like an engorged umbilical cord, a foetus reluctant to birth.
Africa, I try to give birth to you.

I wonder what my life would be if I entered you. Made love to you. Caressed you.
Would I realise that the real battle is not the one between us, but the one within us? What the Quran calls the jihad and the Bible calls Satan, the internal inferno. Would I understand that it is we, your people that cripple you? Not by fighting each other, but ourselves.
Africa, we have forgotten how to love you.

Minna Salami is of Nigerian and Finnish heritage. She grew up in Nigeria, leaving in her teen years for Sweden where she completed studies in Political Science. Thereafter she has lived in Sweden, Spain, New York and now London. She is a Pan-African writer and blogger with a great interest and love for the African continent, its people and its development. Minna blogs at MsAfropolitan.