|
|
Feast
Spindly fingers,
gnarled baobab limbs
wither, vanishing
in the sun-fired earth.
My hoary skin
maps the fractured plain,
feeds it; as I will be feasted.
Feet fan starlit
to the satellite hamlets.
Charcoal plains
rise in the easing deep;
we lurch crazily; Zengo
swerves to skirt
the deadliest pocks.
We rumble onward,
drawn by the scent
of damp, fly-trailed,
deliberate.
Courtesies are Mori-traded;
Zengo's rough fingers
draping the wheel;
scrub trees scar
our ivory flanks
with a blackboard screech.
The goats are tallied,
bone-skin bleaters;
our voices climb.
Earthen tracks, wide
river's edge craters,
hardfired in the kiln
of one Sahelian blaze.
We cavort ankle-deep,
neatly bisecting
the smaller prints.
I hoist a branch,
flaunt ripening ivory.
Her nudge trips me back
belly-sheltered with the other.
Warm breath.
Behind, a slim thread
widens. The charred plain
shadows a graying sky.
We encircle the noxious brute,
head-shaking.
No eyes
trace the fly-flocked granaries.
The driver lifts his shoulders.
Zengo shrugs, guns
the four-by-four.
We are bitten by dust.
When the roar has faded,
our machetes lift
and flash again.
The brush explodes
star strewn, cacophonous.
I sweep them to safety
as I plummet,
but there is none;
scan the blackening in wonder,
seek the voids
of these fallen stars.
Stilt lofted granaries
squat pregnant, akimbo,
straw floors sag low in a
thatch roof reflection;
dense; a moist burden.
|
|
