Poetry: Waiting for our turn
(for Alhaji Taiwo Hassan – Ogogo)
By Majekodunmi Oseriemen Ebhohon
A dead man wakes up at six,
puts on his trousers,
and uses a blade to scrape the hair
off his cold chin.
He walks out into the kitchen,
where another dead body in an apron
is heating up the meat of a slaughtered cow
so they can put it inside their stomachs.
They sit together chewing the flesh,
talking about the actor,
and shedding warm water
for his heart that stopped pumping.
It is a terrifying theater,
how the corpses who still have breath in their lungs
gather in large stone rooms,
wearing their finest clothes,
to weep over the corpse whose breath ran out first.
We look at the box in the ground
and think we are the ones standing.
The body in the soil
and the body holding the handkerchief,
a few turns of the earth.
A vast, crying nursery of the deceased,
holding hands in a crowded line,
waiting for our turn.
