I am of the tribe of reddened oil

though bleached from years

of smoking beneath foreign fire.

i live in the wish that i would learn

to speak by the riverside,

watch the river goddess sing lullabies;

but i wake in oceans of alien condiments,    

the air, vast with influenza.     

Now, my face is a museum

for the spoils of the west.

i am that nnụnụ that does not have a perching place

& with time, the yam dipped in oil is now sausage.

---

Ifem F. C. Adanna is a student of the English and Literary Studies department 200l in the University of Nigeria Nsukka. She hails from Anambra state, Idemili south L.G.A. She is an avid reader and also a writer, but her most enjoyable genre is poetry.