By: E.B Ogwiji
I am aware that the chefs
clothed in academic gowns and umbrella hats
are cooking the meals,
For after these seven weeks
it would be time for the item seven
to be served plentifully in papery platters
ready to be pushed down our oesophagus
like gran’ma fed me pap when I was a toddler
Oh ye sleepless deity
Thou who catches the sweat from papa’s brow
As he ploughs and tills the soil, day and night
Paying with the hard currency of hardwork
To shed my eyes of the scales of illiteracy
It is to you that I pray
May I lose my appetite on that day
When their unpalatable platables
Is placed on the wooden tables of wickedness
Shut my nostrils to its aroma
For ’tis academic death dished deliciously
When we throw our fists
It is normal for them to throw their feasts
When we attempt to break fetters
They give us those lethal letters
Fellow alutaites
I feel the pain, my brain isn’t numb
But mama begs me to be dumb
For she would not want to lick the streets of UI
Like mama Ekene whose sun has been returned to her,
dimmed and almost too quenched to brighten
her days of tireless hawking in Onitsha main market