Love Is
Love is the blossom of the purple flower tree / in harmattan / So that birds and insects will feed / in the dry season / And for the humans, the lucky ones/ to smell and feel the joy
A Striking Space
The paintings appeared like bruises fading in and out in their intensity. Eleanor had worn long sleeves for years and made it her job to inhale her husband’s fits of anger.
Caine Prize Nomination 2024
Announcing the Decolonial Passage Caine Prize for African Writing nominee for 2024.
Forgotten Memories
Perhaps this new life offers him an opportunity to rectify past mistakes, to be a different man from the one who once cast shadows on the canvas of their relationship, creating a portrait of pain by pulling her ponytail, tossing her upon the upholstery, and molding his fists into her frail body like an unrelenting sculptor shaping unforgiving clay.
Reclamation
When I think of the Elmina Castle, / I sense a shift in the tides / I see where stories intertwine / I hear of freedom’s anthem, a melody so rare, / as the waves wash away the weary symbol of pain.
Dangling breasts
The barefooted who danced with the gods / The free women with unstrapped dangling breasts / We danced for all the paths crossed / We danced to the full moonlight until we were ready to set forth again…
In this den should we offer our sacrifice?
Look now, Holy Father, we are turned foreigners in our own land. / Which blood would be enough sacrifice in this den we call earth? / Disarm a ticking bomb and gun held on our head. / Climate change is a hot coal in each and everyone’s back.
My Child’s Hands Trace
some speak of dirt to name the soil that has been displaced / my palms the paths I knew / its lines also contain my futures, / my eyes the family I will not see again / a pile of bodies in between the land and me.
New Words
I want new words that / bring the sky to the shore. Words that bring / one edge to the other edge and create / a surface everyone can walk over and find / that one big daring whatever. That una cosa que es lleno / and stays lleno.
reflection
I ponder the possibilities within this face / from Ghana. not a doppelganger, family / separated by generations and oceans and / chains and ship holds and molasses and / rum and ackee and saltfish and tilapia and / plantain and fufu and bammy and rice &
Foraging for Home
Home. A lazy hammock, / languid between coconut trees, / Home. Thousands of miles across thousands of seas…
I Come to You By Chance
When these words find a place close to you, I hope you hand them an axe to cut through your doors. I hope it breaks through your windows. I hope it gives you sunshine, air, and all the feels to stay open.
Fading Away
My parents are both alive but sometimes I fear that one day, the thread holding their existence in place would snap and all that would remain are memories heaped on history’s back
Embargo
We are all wandering the night, / Searching for one drop of petrol, / And those lucky to find it will be rewarded / with a day of schooling. / Maybe we can after all resist brain drain.
A Letter to the President of Ghana
The rain falls upon every land where we then have sunshine for all and clean air for all to breathe. But when we convert resources of nature into economic resources, not everybody benefits.
the Decolonial Passage 