(Case study of Emmett Till)
(i)
A boy’s imitation flaw is stuttering “Yo! Mama”
in his first poem, scaffolded on a journey.
Parenthesis is parental advice, or sectioned debate about a
teenager’s biological similes-
Like his mother,
he is Lombroso’s spoon count of delinquency in an ugly skull.
Like his father,
he’s an Afro series’ (un)auditioned felon cast member.
Like his friends, homophily-
home training locked on new Versace hairdo.
pear tree putting pressure on the rest of the garden trees.
Wanted face(s), dreads embroidery on the sky’s black billboards.
(ii)
Sterile mornings are dreams deducing themselves.
A morning could only be golden as a baby’s cereal.
[Too many awkward phrasing]-
From backstage is the deafening Jim Crows’ SFX,
also, a cricket’s hallucination of sex hustle/ victim hit-on as if with a Punjabi
batter abreast her tournament screams.
(iii)
“Em, I, Double-s, I, Double-s, I, Double-p, I,” Vowels accursed to a
brief statement when asked where the safety button
is on a girl’s body, when in danger.
“Em, I, Double-s, I, Double-s, I, Double-p, I,” becoming the shortest
river in the gang of broad migrating wings & steel throats.
Until guilty, innocence is an alternative sin-
even when not an American daughter
but blames should’ve remained on the game controller(s),
home and away. Vows accursed-
if one could tell a midnight son to prevent whistling at the day,
& take time to adjust his knot’s tightness, consider
the gauze of his protest’s blisters. May he choose to run from
kissing a slanderous knife & his godly mother would not
have to prepare a strangled meat towards his fifteenth birthday.
Header photograph © Kip Knott.
Ayomide Bayowa is a Nigerian-Canadian poet and filmmaker. He studies Theatre Studies- Creative Writing at the University of Toronto, Canada. He was a long-list of the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize 2018, shortlist of the 2018 Eriata Oribabhor’s Poetry Contest, 2018 and 2019 Christopher Okigbo Inter-university Poetry Prize, the runner up of the 2020 On-Spot Poetry Writing Contest and the winner of the 2020 July’s Open Drawer Poetry Contest, the second runner up of the maiden edition of Arojah Playwriting Prize, 2020 and a finalist of the 9th Open Eurasian Literary Festival, London. He authors, ‘Stream of Tongues, Watercourse of Voices.’
Nice one 🥰
Keep it up