#20 (on hearing about the latest murder, this time at Sheraton Mall)

Nailah Folami Imoja
Image of police tape across a crime scene, used 2019.

 

nowhere is safe
never was
paradise is lost
a figment of some fervent imagination
them vs us
blame and prayer pointless
we have inherited
this
life and living lost 
like video game massacres
like whips and words
belts and belittlings 
flailing souls
because spirit has no anchor
in oceans of morality
and so drift 
astray
shackled
by centuries’ old trauma 
birthing this island covered in blood
we have inherited
this
ancestors calling
from motherland, ocean bed and new world
unacknowledged unnamed unrecognized 
crying for offerings
sufferings falling 
on hard-ears
like mourning sirens
wails of freshly childlost mothers
drowned 
in broadly cast blindfolded sensitivity

so they take what is theirs
and burn the village down
an island covered in blood
then ashes
then dust

march 21, 2019

Nailah Folami Imoja is a Barbadian/British writer, performer and educator.

As a poet, novelist and journalist, Nailah has contributed significantly to the Barbadian litscape, including as coordinator of Writers’ Clinic, the 15-year-old series of monthly workshops produced by Barbados’ National Cultural Foundation. She is co-editor of So Many Islands from Peekash Press, released in 2018, and her work appears in numerous anthologies.  One of her YA novellas, Pick of the Crop, was published by Heinemann Publishing in 2004. 

She has performed her work in England, Canada, Suriname, Guyana, and Trinidad.

Nailah is a contributing editor for ArtsEtc.  Many of her other novellas are available at www.smashwords.com.