by John Dorroh
Search Party
Flesh and metals are the architecture of our cities. Have you seen
a city laid bare by violence tearing through it streets at high speed?
Why do we name a hurricane?
We climb over naked steel rods and floating torsos in search of survivors.
Every sight of a body looks like him. his thin wiry frame, his greying
goatee, his heavily wrinkled face, until I get close and then it is not him.
I don’t feel guilty for the relief I feel, I don’t feel much besides dread.
Grandpa’s mouth was a belly for folk music and superstitions.
he always maintained that to name a child meant breaking kola-nuts
with the spirits, and welcoming the child home with open arms.
So why do we name a hurricane?
My stomach is twisting into knots from the fear of not knowing,
and the fear of discovering. We ascend a flight of stairs in a building
half buried by the floods. The rugs smell how I imagine a grave would.
On the top floor is yet another body. a woman lying beside a mannequin.
both lifeless. Above her is an inscription in red chalk on the concrete wall.
staring at us accusingly, it reads.
why does it always take disaster to bring help?
From behind me, someone starts to cry. Me, I just want to go home.
Sadiq Abdulsalam Adeiza is a writer from Okene, Nigeria.His works have been published in African Writer Magazine, Praxis Magazine Online, Memento: An anthology of contemporary Nigerian Poetry and elsewhere. Find him on Twitter: @hibreedz.
John Dorroh bio here