Witnessing The Herdsmen Massacre, or
This Is How You Leave Home
Iveren Cheku
i
The first day you crawl out of a cricket hole, you see a whole plain field and your mother teaches you what she never did before
She tells you about freedom, a ball you kick far into the horizon
You run after it and call to it but what you actually want is to hear your voice echo
The new moon is a new bride, hiding behind a veil of cloud.
You count the stars and call it home.
You’re beginning to nurture a forest of edible shrubs
You flash a smile at your environ and shake hands with her serenity.
ii
There are camps far ahead, an unspoken borderline of where my ball won’t find freedom.
Some days, the camp mooed.
some nights, we saw embers.
Just like when ‘mun chi’ was a thing
My ma says.
I swallow and disagree in silence.
These days, there’s a flame affair in some town or the other,
When ‘mun chi’ was a thing, cattle dung was smeared on farm circumferences.
We too, have farms. It’s just a matter of time.
iii
Good old radio paints pictures of eviscerated fetuses
They call it clash--
a softer synonym for massacre
It by all means, was a Clash:
73 people, one ethnicity.
Who knows, the media refines figure.
Just saying.
The camps begin to fade.
More motion.
Close motion, and loud mooing.
Security lights are better put off at night to avoid insects or attention.
‘Put off your generator, read the times’
For morning devotion, we are thankful for the sun.
We survived the things that happen at dawn.
iv
I hardly ever hear my name when I’m called, all too often, my ears bring to me voices.
a man got ‘escorted’
It’s a windy morning in February,
the voices begin to speak.
Breakfast is half cooked when the herd comes trooping and what you hear next throws everyone makes you quiver, and run
until this metallic music fades out
You grab a few and the not yet ready to be brought down from fire pot.
Salvation is you first, and then food.
v
you crawl out of a new hole and try to stretch your bones.
You hit confinement, the heavens are not so far above. You might
tear the sky and scratch God.
You’re learning to whisper
when you dress a chicken,
Echoes are chicken bile, cut off with care.
In your sleep, you have become liquid,
and mother teaches you afresh how to shrink.
She trims your wings, tucks you safe,
into a cocoon.
The first day you crawl out of a cricket hole, you see a whole plain field and your mother teaches you what she never did before
She tells you about freedom, a ball you kick far into the horizon
You run after it and call to it but what you actually want is to hear your voice echo
The new moon is a new bride, hiding behind a veil of cloud.
You count the stars and call it home.
You’re beginning to nurture a forest of edible shrubs
You flash a smile at your environ and shake hands with her serenity.
ii
There are camps far ahead, an unspoken borderline of where my ball won’t find freedom.
Some days, the camp mooed.
some nights, we saw embers.
Just like when ‘mun chi’ was a thing
My ma says.
I swallow and disagree in silence.
These days, there’s a flame affair in some town or the other,
When ‘mun chi’ was a thing, cattle dung was smeared on farm circumferences.
We too, have farms. It’s just a matter of time.
iii
Good old radio paints pictures of eviscerated fetuses
They call it clash--
a softer synonym for massacre
It by all means, was a Clash:
73 people, one ethnicity.
Who knows, the media refines figure.
Just saying.
The camps begin to fade.
More motion.
Close motion, and loud mooing.
Security lights are better put off at night to avoid insects or attention.
‘Put off your generator, read the times’
For morning devotion, we are thankful for the sun.
We survived the things that happen at dawn.
iv
I hardly ever hear my name when I’m called, all too often, my ears bring to me voices.
a man got ‘escorted’
It’s a windy morning in February,
the voices begin to speak.
Breakfast is half cooked when the herd comes trooping and what you hear next throws everyone makes you quiver, and run
until this metallic music fades out
You grab a few and the not yet ready to be brought down from fire pot.
Salvation is you first, and then food.
v
you crawl out of a new hole and try to stretch your bones.
You hit confinement, the heavens are not so far above. You might
tear the sky and scratch God.
You’re learning to whisper
when you dress a chicken,
Echoes are chicken bile, cut off with care.
In your sleep, you have become liquid,
and mother teaches you afresh how to shrink.
She trims your wings, tucks you safe,
into a cocoon.
Iveren Cheku (she/her) is an emerging Nigerian poet who lives in Makurdi. She writes from a place of deep concern for mental health and social injustice. When she’s not writing she’s making great dresses and multitasking with a thousand hypothetical scenarios in her head. She says hi on Twitter @Aiveemls
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