To Make A City
Chinecherem Veronica Enujioke
"Women have slippery tongues, and are unable to conceal from their fellow-women those things which by evil they know; and, since they are weak, they find an easy and secret manner of vindicating themselves by witchcraft" - The Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches), 1486.
For all victims of the Salem Witch hunt.
I am plucked before dawn
from every dream I have
and I pick pieces of myself
finding something to hold on to
like a cancerous cell clings to life
refusing to let go.
Even life here is broken.
Our memories float
like shards of a broken mirror.
I race against my city
while another city
thrives in my belly.
When I am delivered of this one,
before I give her a name,
I shall first sing
to her, all the names
God bears in my language;
names for joy,
names for disaster,
names for when they hang her
on gallows
for saying her name.
At home,
we ask strangers their names
and count how many blinks
before they speak.
At home,
even a name is spell enough
to set ablaze a whole city.
We cannot bury our dead,
we know no befitting songs.
Our beds are open graves
where we chant
with ashes on our foreheads
and our legs buried in swamp.
When this city comes forth,
I will send her far away
where strangers do not pounce
on names obstructed by the tongue.
Where her songs will be loud
And her cities her cities
will be home for pariahs,
for everything that wants
to sing, walk another way.