The Ofi Press Magazine

Poems by Nana Fredua-Agyeman (Ghana)

Published in issue 40 of The Ofi Press

Discovery

Digging for tubers

of cassava

the root of our fingers

uprooted

skulls…

            and then…

femurs…tibias…

carpals…tarsals…

ribs…metacarpals…

hips…metatarsals…

of seething ghosts

whose spirits

trail our homes

traverse the forests

and have no rest

Buried in pieces

in dugouts

and trenches

remembered by none

save the termites

which file past

in one long scribble

spelling their life’s

achievements in

twisted epitaphs

Their assassins

being our

Armageddon shall

taste no death on earth

but shall live into

the eternity of hell

When man exacts

judgement unto man

his measure is the

firmament’s expanse

his expectations are

the seas whose borders

our brains cannot stake

Man has buried man

for unknown sins

and these mass graves

lost in time’s memory

call forth man’s earliest debasement.