PALESTINE

[after Abdulrauf Olajide & Dolapo Tajudeen]
“The remains of war are the inheritances of the living.”—Wale Olaogun

What trains a child how to make his
parents lick his foot? I mean, when do
bones, blood, ash turn elements of sand?
This poem holds the portrait of a child on
prostration, tracing himself to darkness.
His heart facing the sky, searching for light.
Light is why a drop of pin is never a gunshot.
Gun, when cocked, doesn’t carry the semblance of a cock.
when cock crows, ‘Alhamdulillahi…’ grows on the
tongue; when guns ask questions of doom,
silence replies, & ‘ Innaa liLlah…’ traces the air to the sky.
See, gun is fast at taking breath out of clock.
I mean, life dances, out of the body, to the tune
of the bullets, like Palestine to unholy WAR.
This child thinks Alhamdulillah & Innaa liLlahi
are twin brothers. See how his memory dives into the pool
of blood of his father, his mother, his siblings, & his friends.
See how he’s feeding the belly of the sand with bones
of his beloveds. See how he watches the ashes of their
cremains cry in an urn. But you—you have smiling
daffodils in the vase on your windowsill,
why would you forget your brothers who
plant bodies as flowers on their land?

—AL-IMRAN

By Azeez Odunjo.