Flourish Joshua

Akeldama

for Deborah Yakubu, beaten & burned to death for blasphemy

Perhaps grace is a tangible thing
only to the one who watches another bleed.
—Pamilerin Jacob

 1.
Again, a hashtag trades a name
    for justice,       but they will not buy
what the hashtags have to sell.

2.
O, graceless country, confide in me—
      how did you end up
with mouthfuls      of Jericho?
          With eyes the assignment of blades?

3.
In my country,   they are sending     a woman
   on a journey of no return,
for wearing  a tongue too sacred to translate.

They are pressing her
into the palm of the earth
as offering to their god.

4.
A man says sodom is best
        a name  for places like this
with wildfire as eyes, & we hear God
say, that is too holy a name.

5.
In the near, they are fighting for their god,
      & knitting cruel things
to its name: say, impotence, imbecility, folly, …

6.
Perhaps fate is the substance
of things unhoped for,     the evidence

             of things we [all] see.

7.
Here,   they will fasten a grenade
            to your tongue if your voice manages
to slip off your mouth.

8.
Everything is fashioned
to reserve you a seat
at the mouth of a wound.

9.
Preacherman, how dare you say
       grace will abound?    We run
to God for grace—grace, too,
               is on the queue for grace.

10.
They will blow our minds
             if we            say our minds.

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Flourish Joshua is a Nigerian poet, a member of the Frontiers Collective.