written after the Lekki Massacre on October 20, 2020
after Daniel Borzutzky’s Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018
there is no flag that’ll shield you from the dispersion of bullets
there is no song that’ll impede darkness from descending
& receding light into memory
the shadows breathes death at us the vessels of darkness don uniforms
& sling demise into our body & deaden any pulse of hope
& bleed our future in trickles of crimson
look we’ve spoken & are speaking & our voices
have extended across the globe [like a tie around the neck]
just look at the stage
there is a man in white with a fervid grin carved across his face
I die every time I see the cadavers of youths
who thirsted for the appearance of light
not the promise of oblivion
look we do not bear silence in our name
do not forget that bodies slumped [like fallen trees]
at the puncture of bullets
do not forget that the army deadened young voice
do not forget that the government is a knife plunging her citizens
pray loudly into the expanse for the undoing of darkness
the only air in this country is corruption
[& we will no longer breathe in death & breathe out life]
Biography
Praise Osawaru (he/him) is a writer of Bini descent. A Best of the Net nominee, his work appears or is forthcoming in FIYAH, Frontier Poetry, Down River Road, Rigorous Magazine, The Lit Quarterly, and The Maine Review, among others. An NF2W Poetry scholar, he’s the second-place winner of the Nigerian NewsDirect Poetry Prize 2020 and a finalist for the 2021 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize & the 2020 Awele Creative Trust Award. He’s a reader for Barren Magazine and Chestnut Review. Find him on Instagram & Twitter: @wordsmithpraise.