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SWALE LIFE > POETRY
This Land is not a
Land of Terror
(To Ayogu Eze)
by Nnorom Azuonye
My first clothes were sewn by defiant tailors
in fabric of blood, night, and unripe horizontals,
emblazoned with a badge of the purest fiery gold;
the eleven-tongued fireball rolling on a plank.
At three, naked to my boyhood sack, I nosed smoke
from that bonfire of the vanquished in my hometown;
there, my clothes were cremated with a hundred others,
together with our bottle, our pride, our story.
Now you ask, was there anything worth dying for?
A different today would have been a special gift,
meaning I could justly protest: our land is not a land
of terror, despite the Umar Abdulmuttalab factor.
You remind me of my phone call to Aba yesterday,
a call reporting fire fights just like the old Biafra days;
a bank robbery at Osisioma, seven policemen shot dead
in mid-afternoon, as frightened men pack and leave town.
Yet, this land is not a land of terror. At least, not
in the traditional sense of terrorism; we don’t desire
immortality bad enough to stain our hands with blood.
We never honour a murderer’s family above others.
There’s only the little inconvenience of hiring soldiers
to protect us when we return to our villages for palm wine,
to renew ourselves, marry, build, or bury our parents,
lest we become borrowed by the vicious, until ransomed.
This land is not a land of terror. It’s just jobless kids
horsing around with assault rifles and large car boots
for carting away their human cargo – dead or alive.
Ah! We strenuously refuse to be branded a terrorist land.
News and Events
"Community
Cohesion in Swale and Kent, 6th October 2010"
by Sharon Williams
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Contributors
Mary-Laine Friday
Briony Jones
Nnorom Azuonye
Hannah Edeki
Sharon Williams
Christine Locke
Jennie Wakuche
| Nnorom Azuonye
has published poetry in several international print
and electronic journals including Ink Sweat and
Tears, Orbis, Agenda and Eclectica. His books
include The Bridge Selection: Poems for the Road,
and Blue Hyacinths (ed. with Geoff Stevens.) |
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