Ayegba Stephen Emmanuel: Brothers and Scavengers

Brothers and Scavengers

©2010 Ayegba Stephen Emmanuel

The vultures can’t wait
For tomorrow will be
A time of orgiastic scavenging
Of heads severed from bodies
Of entrails spilled by daggers
Of limbs in a meal
Of blood, silt and vegetation.
Brothers have called the vultures
To a feast amply supplied
With the remains of their brothers
That is why expectant mothers
Will die undelivered
That is why green farms
Will wither in mid-rainy season
Even though the warriors
Crack jokes before a dying fire
The dog that wanders in
The dark empty streets
Knows that it has just begun.

Eclipse

©2010 Ayegba Stephen Emmanuel

Who watches
When the hawk
Defies ancestry
And bloodies her claws
With the hen’s offspring
In one fatal flight?

[click to view introduction]