Rasaq Malik is a graduate of the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. His poems have appeared in Nigerian Newspapers and online literary journals such as ONE, Sentinel, Saraba, and Kalahari Review.---------
Garissa
After the massacre perpetrated by Al-Shabaab terrorists at the Garissa University College, Kenya
It could be you. It could be your
sister saying Subhanallah as she
sees the gory scenes of this massacre
in a newspaper.
It could be your brother saying
Jesus Christ on a Thursday morning
in Garissa. It could be his headless
body. It could be his broken leg,
his bullet-ridden chest. It could be
his blood-stained shirt. It could be
your lover sending her last message
to you at the College.
It could be your friend dusting his
bicycle on a Saturday morning in
Baga. It could be your own dream
buried by those beasts. It could be
your voice screaming help in a cube
blown by bombs, in a dormitory
full of students caught in the horror,
molded into things for earth to devour.
It could be your body wheeled
to the morgue.
It could be someone you know,
someone you love. Someone like
your father who kisses your brow
every night. Someone like your
mother waiting to embrace you.
It could be your country,
fading in your presence.
It could be your bones
blasting in the fire.
What We Will Become
Among what we will become the earth
comes first. Then the things that occupy it:
stones scattered in the field, leaves burrowed
by beetles, dust poured like grains inside
a shovel, worms weaving their way
through the soil, wastes eroded by flood,
layers of peeled oranges, horns of dead animals,
burnt tyres, withered grass, dunes, rocks cracked
by the storm.
We will become memories beneath unidentified graves,
weedy gardens, woods piled in the creek, ashes left in the
rain, the silence in desolate houses, the lost moments,
forgotten biographies.