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
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…
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.
When the Killing Ends
someone tell me please: / what will Gaza look like / when the killing ends?
Bones Beneath the Plow
Today perhaps you breathed in the DNA of Nagasaki,/ washed off from dust from Dachau with Soweto’s tears, / picked up echoes from a dark corner of Santiago.
Albert Ayler’s Vision
And why does it always have to white? / A white god with a white beard dressed / in white (never mind the poor souls / taught to run the other way whenever / they saw men in white robes)
O!
out of the fifth floor window of her El-Biar flat from where she had / watched the Algerian People’s Army open fire on students / journalist Josie jumped
Germinate in Time
To rip out our roots / they learned our language / exchanged our deities / for saints and the images of virgins. / Out of fear for the scorching flames of the pyre / we turned ourselves into seeds / to germinate at the appointed time.
history ended
dearest ghosts from biafra / and ethiopia / dearest ghosts / from the apartheid / dearest ghosts from angola / and mozambique / dearest ghosts from libya / and somalia
the Decolonial Passage 