We walked to mourn the prime minister\u2019s son
his coffin draped in cloth twist from lightning.
A boy\u2019s laugh got stuck in the dusty harmattan wind
in the haze, lighter than cassava chaff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
History is a cracked calabash. Men build
pyramids of salt, swear they\u2019ll outlast the rains.
The farm god hums through cracked soil:
Even the stubborn iroko tree bows to termites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Funeral tickets sold like hot palm wine at Sunset
Grief\u2019s market where folks trade tears for a good seat.
The minister melted like shea butter in the sun,
his speeches ash in the harmattan\u2019s dry throat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The river doesn\u2019t care about bridges. \u201cBurn them!\u201d she laughs,
\u201cMy water births and buries your iron bones.\u201d
The boy\u2019s name floats where moonlight coins sink\u2014
a silverfish slipping through the fisherman\u2019s net.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hyenas chorus what the farm god knows:
You stack days like yams in a famine season.
Wind will scatter your tallest stories
to feed the millet fields of tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I learned we\u2019re all just like pounded Yam,
soft, steaming, forgotten by noon.
The Farm god leaves me a hoe and a proverb:
Plant your shadow where the\u00a0soil\u00a0remembers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We walked to mourn the prime minister\u2019s sonhis coffin draped in cloth twist from lightning.A boy\u2019s laugh got stuck in the dusty harmattan windin the haze, lighter than cassava chaff. History is a cracked calabash. Men buildpyramids of salt, swear they\u2019ll outlast the rains.The farm god hums through cracked soil:Even the stubborn iroko tree bows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[332],"class_list":{"0":"post-4951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-literature"},"authors":[{"term_id":332,"user_id":3,"is_guest":0,"slug":"sebastianhills","display_name":"Sebastian Hills","avatar_url":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/sebas-96x96.jpg","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4953,"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4951\/revisions\/4953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4951"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/villpress.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=4951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}