<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We used to ask \u201cwhat\u2019s for dinner\u201d
\nlike we were investigating a homicide.
\nMama\u2019s alibi was \u201cI\u2019m too tired\u201d.
\nThe fridge confessed of empty shelves.
\nThe air smelt of two-day old hunger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was six when I learned to interrogate my stomach.
\nIt would growl as I\u2019d torture it for answers.
\nPromised that it had no relief to give me,
\njust a bag of acid worth survival<\/p>\n\n\n\n
for now. I\u2019ll eat leftovers of my resolve.
\nPain is what you eat
\nafter the world leaves you for dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps, survival is its own kind of death.
\nLike a silence that strangles the spirit.
\nLike a double-edged salvation,
\nfor which, one relinquishes the world
\nor at the very least, their continuity.
\nAt the price of our forebearers, we lived.
\nForgot who it was that gave us our names.
\nForgot that the river of blood we outswam predated the horror of our yesterdays,
\nand became
\nuntethered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Up until I was eight, my father was dead. My father\u2019s resurrection disappointed. I do not remember what I said \u2013 perhaps nothing. My mother calls me Canadian as if I stole something from her. La Guerre a pris tout sauf Dieu.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1994, 96, and 98 always meant more to Mama than the birth of her youngest sons. Church taught us to dance as if only Dieu was watching. I was young enough to believe we were related to all the men and women, Once mastered, movement gave way to voice. Mama refers to police and demons in the same sentences. \u201cPokea sifa Mama calls evil a sickness of the spirit. \u201cPokea sifa Mama taught us to cope through harmonies and to break in silence. Smoke-filled rooms and afro-letariats. Those of us who remained, gathered, made homes of neglected places. When The Dream met Reality, I was a third year standing over a grave. Monkey Training for a Circus<\/strong>
\nIn my mind, he had endured the fate of prophets.
\nMama always said he was alive, but so too was Jesus.
\nI thought of Africa the same way I thought of heaven:
\na beautiful place for people too holy to be alive.
\n\u201cNotre P\u00e8re qui es aux cieux<\/em>\u201d was the beginning of a eulogy,
\nthe Lord\u2019s Prayer was a letter to the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nHe passed under the \u2018Arrivals\u2019 sign without a smile \u2013
\nhis face ominously stoic like a man staring down a firing squad.
\nI had prayed for a father, and though I now had one,
\nI felt forsaken.
\nAfter greeting mama with a musicality
\nthat proved he too had seen other dimensions,
\nhe nodded towards us, his children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nBut I remember seeing a stranger,
\nwhere my brothers vaguely recognized their father.
\nI remember realizing, although only for a second,
\nwhat it meant to have been born displaced
\nfrom that world mama so proudly claimed.
\nI was the foreigner.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe River that Swallows all Rivers<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\nShe used to speak about Mobutu and Kabila like they orchestrated the theft.
\nIf listened to carefully, you would hear an elegy about the worlds we once knew.
\nOne that explained how birthrights could be stolen.
\nHow acronyms, radio-waves, noses, and tongues could be weaponized.
\nHow cities could fall, and homes could be left vacant after nights of premonitions and prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIn 94, our neighbours converted to the cult of slaughter \u2013 lake Kivu became a tomb.
\nIn 96, genocide gave birth to civil war \u2013 Zaire swallowed the earth.
\nIn 98, we fled \u2013 the sky collapsed, the sun vanished.
\nIn 2000, Kisangani fell \u2013 along with 6000 artillery shells.<\/p>\n\n\n\nKingdom Come<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\nSpeaking in tongues was a prerequisite to membership \u2013
\nunless one was lucky enough to be given a translation.
\nRhythm was worship; the wrong steps were sacrilegious.
\nLosing focus was forgetting where one came from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nmama introduced to us as \u2018tonton ou tante,\u2019
\nwhen I learned that outsiders could be distinguished
\nby their offbeat movements and discordant claps.
\nFor us, belonging meant perfecting the two-step, the shoulder sway, and the pace of praise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nVoice brought with it harmony and harmony purged our collective disbelief.
\nPrayer became tumultuous \u2013
\nthe sound of a dozen orators competing for the lord\u2019s ears would reach a crescendo.
\nThe pastor would exclaim \u2018Hallelujah,\u2019 to which the congregation always replied,
\nAmen.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPokea Sifa<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\nThe possessed patrol us for fear that we might exorcise their followers.
\nWe drown out police sirens with gospel music
\nand sing until the demons meet their quotas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n<\/em>Bwana pokea sifa
\n<\/em>Jina lako litukuzwe
\n<\/em>Bwana pokea sifa\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nHer metaphysics don\u2019t leave room for meaningless murder.
\nSays Satan always attacks the family first \u2013 as if he were the reason she crossed the Atlantic.
\nTonight, we cleanse the projects with our voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n<\/em>Bwana pokea sifa
\n<\/em>Jina lako litukuzwe
\n<\/em>Bwana pokea sifa\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nWe learnt the logic of rhythm to the beat of doomsday.
\nWhen the apocalypse came we sang \u2013
\noffered our tears as libations and prepared for the worst.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Bourgeoisie of the Eleventh Hour<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\nBefore the philosophy of self-medication took hold of our chain-gang,
\nwe coped by externalizing our dreams on football fields and in lecture halls.
\nThat was before the whistles lost their music, back when DC4 was gospel,
\nand The League seemed plausible.
\nBefore The Ivory Tower lost its warmth.
\nBefore emails, eviction notices, and missed payments
\nwarranted sending the least fortunate of the unfortunate
\nback to the hoods, ghettos, and caves from which they came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n48 Union \u2013 a sinking house with a void for a basement \u2013 became a citadel.
\nA refuge for untouchables, a fortress so radical
\nthat the descendants of slaves, the colonized,
\nand the nearly ethnically cleansed could, in it, practice the full-range of their humanity.
\nThere we fostered our resistance, some through the poetics of taking space,
\nothers through more illicit means \u2013 though no less prophetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nMy helmet now dusty,
\nor sweaty with the work of another man willing to pay for his fever dream with head trauma.
\nThe grave belonging to men and women, whom I had never met \u2013
\nyet I imagine I would recognize their faces.
\nI imagine I would recognize the chains that bound them to this land.
\nDifferent in weight than my own, but of the same manufacturer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n Give the photographers no more
\nops like this denatured rhesus monkey
\nturned tragic clown. Jammed against
\na man-made wall, he would fade out
\nof his overexposed life,
\nbut a chain collars him to a bike;
\nneck and prop bound in motion\u2019s
\ntug\u2019o war–he\u2019s screwed
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 in black and white.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5006,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/5006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}