Scalpels on a Sunday Hymn

At the center of the slaughterhouse,

a song is awake

       toppled walls, void of rafters, tired floors.

There is a flock resting under the aegis

of mourning, I do not wish to rescue any.

Whether bruised or abraded

I do not wish to collect grief from its tongue.

The butchery is the beginning

 of memory,

the night it all started—scalpels— landing

on the nape of high-pitched bleats.

Perhaps, it was love and its frolicking

thinking tulips will spring

in a place built for ruin.

The shepherd, in whose name

they were gathered, did not hear

how they hemmed their ache to a song.

Ask the ewe gathering burnt hooves

of her love, his bones splintered.

the blood strewn through the asphalt

Ask the ash taking him home.

Home of Crease

                                         When the heart of men

                              grew lifeless like a moth caught

                                        in a spider’s web, 

                                           a woman, my mother’s age,

                                      walked the whispering street

                                                    singing.

                                  elegy–

                                         leaking from her mouth

                                                a song, tired of peculiar grief.

                                     her boys, beheaded

                              as proof of war’s torrid teeth.

                                                   her husband too, missing

                                & here is an incision: loss

                                              splits

                                                   the heart open

                                       and leaves the mouth longing.

                                               Somewhere, the radio unbuckles

                                              the voice of a man

                                  who says

                                                  Rana iriya tana tafe

                                              (A better day is coming)

                                     but we all know, the wall that

                                                 separates him from a corpse

                                      is a stray bullet, or perhaps

                                                      the language of his God.

                                           Across the street,

                                                 two children chase each other-

                                                         tree branches for guns,

                                                        fire fire!!

                                                  one plays dead.

                                                         Say,

                                                like this child, we live every day

                                                 practicing our death.

The Ache of My Father

               “Following the kidnap of a relative in August 2024”

All his friends were leaving,

not in the way his ancestors left. I mean,

there is a soul held in a forest.

Mouth, sealed. Hands tied. Helpless.

And we keep reaching for God,

like how the woman in red

crawls until her hands touch a spectacle.

Here, we kneel. We hustle the light under

our shadows of emptiness.

I found my father in saltwater, drowning.

An old photo, clutched in his hand.

Wanting to rescue all of them—

school boys, standing in memorial,

all shape shifting into earth’s marble cage,

we both agree there is nothing left

except hope. But how much hope is enough

to keep our hearts from weeping?

See, he is here, dressed in metaphors

and I hold a torch to say, I am still

searching.

Annah Atane is a Nigerian writer. Her works have appeared in the Brittle Paper, The Meniscus, The Muse, Valiant Scribe, The Kalahari Review, Ric Journal and elsewhere.