BLESSING OMEIZA OJO
Deforestation
It’s harmattan. And somewhere, a tree has fallen.
I am going home with the bark as a proof for my son,
twelve, who wants to be a plant in a foreign soil.
I agree: his father’s land is too dry to be tilled.
How do I tell him he might not have the space to bloom?
At home, he is watching a movie in which a black man
dies the death of a cockroach. I pat him:
“Son, this is what happens in your dreamland.
And at the border, there is a thousand percent chance
that your skin would bounce you back here.
I, too, once pictured myself overseas, apple pie in my mouth,
serenading the name of my lover which I hoped was Pearl-Kayla.
Son, I am speaking from history – what my history teacher
failed to tell me, I read in the farmer’s book:
the black forest was cut down, and the land given over by chance.
There is a cut down on black skin, on black history–
It is by chance too, if anyone, today, crosses the border,
without being mauled or cut down.
Blessing Omeiza Ojo is black bard married to an Enchantress. He is the Chairman of Hill-Top Creative Arts Foundation, Abuja. He is a contributor to literary journals with poetry surfacing in The Deadlands, Cọ́n-scìò, Split Lip, Olney, Praxis, and elsewhere. His literary awards include the 9th Korea-Nigeria Poetry Prize (Ambassador Special Prize), the 2020 Artslounge Literature Teacher of the Year Award, the 2021 Words Rhymes & Rhythm Nigerian Teacher’s Award, and the 2022 Maryam Aliyu Award for Best Teacher (Male). He is presently a creative writing instructor at Jewel Model Secondary School, Abuja, Nigeria.