Dipe Jola

THE BULLET AND THE VIRUS
(in memory of Yasin Moyo)

BBC Africa reports on Police Brutality
in Mathare, Kenya

the wind hits the sea therapeutically. 
what is more dangerous than a country licking
salt off its patriots? what is more traumatic than
a bizarre collection of a mother’s unfiltered statements
over a dead son? “Mama, I have been shot.”
what is more dangerous amongst a quiver of nature-
changing animals and a gust of the unexpected?
a boy's emergence to dust in his mother’s room, before 
his mother’s eyes. the void in the silence that tails it.
“Mama, I have been shot.” rings through me like a whistling
kettle. a country good as owls; feasting, frightening, festering.
a pandemic hits, then brutality. a whole child, then body.
what do we give to our owners not to skin us alive? what do
we offer to prevent our bodies a parcel sent home? most 
are wounded souls; voices lost; from Kendari to Mathare,
to Makoko to Ajegunle. “Mama, I have been shot.” i imagined
your voice— gentle as a morning dew— slowing down, staggering
to the pharynx. your mother’s eyes watering a barren garden,
 as i saw on TV. Oh Moyo! lay peacefully away from the unrest
of the world.