THE TRANCE
He loved the darkness in my eyes
And I loved the sea that rolled in his
We became one in a gaze
The world was lost to us
What was race?
THE STRANGE TALE OF THE GREAT IROKO
The news of my father’s death hang heavy on our necks like the chains and shackles of a thousand Salaga prisoners. The cries of twenty five newly widowed women pierced the thick darkness the moonless night brought, leaving it empty and completely dead. The only light that shone through the night was the happy flickering fire in Pokuya’s eyes. She was Papa’s youngest wife, and still in her prime. Perhaps, the sad news in itself was liberation to her forcefully captured heart, and as much as she wanted to hide how she felt, she couldn’t shed a single tear. She went unnoticed by the other wives who were stuck fast in a herbal bath of nauseating melancholy. Any woman who did not cry when her husband died was branded a witch per the custom of Nsuma. I am an outcast. I am a griot. I am a loner who often sits under this Iroko tree with a chewing stick in one hand and my chin resting in the other. My bulgy eyes are pregnant with unseen and untold secrets of passers-by. No one...
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