The Village Inside

By Majekodunmi Ebhohon

INSIDE me,
a market thrives—
microbes haggle over maize and yam,
trading enzymes in the heat of the stalls,
arguing over the boundaries of oil and water.

My pancreas leans against the mud wall,
arms folded, waiting for the king’s decree,
while the liver paces like a restless chief,
measuring the tribute of last night’s beans.

Sulfur clouds rise like smoke from a hearth;
I catch the scent and do not turn away.
This is the dialect of the gut,
the unedited speech of the belly.

Grease drifts down the alleys of the ileum.
Bacteria march in tight, rhythmic columns,
singing patterns I can almost decode,
like the split kola nuts in a divining tray.

I sip bitter-leaf tea
and wait as my stomach drafts reports
on the fish I ate by the river,
the fufu I folded into the shape
of an orange.

A thin thread of panic unspools
when the stool turns pale,
loose, or oily;
a warning from the council of organs
that the village walls are thinning—

yet floods knock at human doors,
men debate budgets,
squabble over borders,
and entangled dialects,
ignoring the overdue signals
screaming in their own bile.

I honour the slow rot of fermentation,
the quiet rebellion of the microbiome,
the way life must digest itself
before the mouth can find its words.

I walk through the streets,
my gut a drum,
its heavy smells announcing
that the village is awake,
that I am alive—
even as the human council sleeps
atop a stack of warnings turned ash.

Ebhohon, a Nigerian poet and playwright and author of The Great Delusion, winner of the ANA Prize for Drama, 2025, writes from Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria – sankara101010@gmail.com