Poetry: Showroom

By Majekodunmi Ebhohon

IT is easy to tell when the script
has been written by a surgeon.
You watch the new movie on the screen,
and the actress cannot sit down
without three pillows from the hotel lobby.
She plays a village girl who fetches water,
but her hips are wider than the well.

She walks down the dusty road,
carrying a small clay pot on her head
and two giant watermelons in her trousers.
The movie director is a patient man.
He keeps the camera low, focusing
on the architecture of the spine,
knowing the dialogue is just a minor delay
before the next physical turn.

We all know the mathematics of this industry.
The production house pays twenty thousand
for four weeks of crying in the jungle,
yet by next Monday, she is on the internet
posing with the keys to a house in Lekki.
Is it not an efficient system of trade?

You pay five million to the doctor in Lagos,
he pumps the fat from the belly into the back,
and suddenly you have a walking billboard
for the oil block committee.
The executive director does not watch the film.

He watches the credits, waiting for the contact number,
knowing this is no longer theater
but a livestock market with a plot.
So tomorrow, the young girls will line up for the audition,
memorizing lines about love and betrayal,
unaware that the script is already finished,
and the only thing left to rehearse
is how to look natural while carrying
the treasury on your buttocks.