We Are All Fishes Angling in a Simmering Lake
Title: We Are All Fishes Angling in a Simmering Lake
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Date: 2021
24″ x 30″
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Title: We Are All Fishes Angling in a Simmering Lake
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Date: 2021
24″ x 30″
The Proposal
(To the colonial master)
Oga, will you marry me,
and take me home?
I can be your second
even third or fourth wife
You look so handsome
and I giggle
Captive No More
1
What you are reading is not poetry. It is not fiction. It is my true family history.
I am an ascendant from slavery. Yes.
It means I am a descendant of enslaved bodies. Yes.
Inside me, they locked iron collars,
leg fetters, and hand lockers. Yes.
Yes. Does it sound weird? Yes.
Slavery was real in Africa. Yes
Africa was the Ground Zero of slavery. Yes.
OLÓDÙMARÈ is what I have written here, using the Yoruba alphabet that I just designed. It…
Àkòdì Òrìṣà artists painting the outside fence at Ile Ife, Nigeria.
PEACE, LOVE AND HAPPINESS
Egbé lifted me up and away,
down the tunnels of clouds
and we alighted inside the ground
a million years and a thousand days
below the level of my house.
“Browse,” Àjà said, “read the entries.
Do you know this song?
Ẹ fà á nírungbọn tu!
Ẹ fà á nírungbọn tu ò
Àgbàlagbà tí ò lówó lọ́wọ́
Tó ń dá irungbọ̀n sí
Ẹ fà á nírungbọn tu.