by Linda Hawkins
The plunder of my body is in your hands
they made art out of our pantheon
have you been to the secret lair of our plunderers?
they sold us their faceless deities
their decrepit ancestors
& turned our shrines to mantelpieces
our gods wept in their benign cruelty
& their gods did not understand
the language of our suffering
do you know of this thing?
I mean they have the masks
hiding the masquerade
& now those broken spirits wander dusk
untethered from their summons
the sacred waist beads
the cowried anklets have become curios
in the snoot stained fingers of children
what do they know of the power
hiding in cowries knocked
between the laps of the chalked seer?
for them
another Van Gogh will find language
in the shapes of Insibidi
in the deeply cut geometry
of clay & wood
stone & bronze
meanwhile we paint mute pictures
& attempt to give their deities a face
to remind us of who we used to be
Osahon Oka is a poet living in Nigeria. He lives alone in Benin city where he spends his days writing and abandoning poems and short stories to dusty computer folders, reading, playing blockchain games and watching Instagram reels. He loves dogs and hopes to adopt one some day. His writing can be found on Decolonial Passage, Conscio Magazine, Jalada Africa, Lucky Jefferson and elsewhere.
Linda Hawkins is a self-taught watercolor artist and photographer, living on the central coast of California. Linda uses her art to express her appreciation for nature, both through the camera lense and paint brush. Her visual art has appeared, or is forthcoming in: Flash Frog, The Jupiter Review, Pithead Chapel (cover), Acropolis Journal, Wrongdoing Magazine, Moss Puppy Mag, and celestite poetry. She can be found on Twitter: @lindamayhawkins and at lindamayhawkins.com.