This poem is dedicated to the estimated 12.5 million men, women, and children forcibly transported from Africa to the Americas during the Atlantic Slave Trade, circa AD 1526 to 1867. You have not been forgotten!
BLUE
I
Africans in the hold fold themselves
to make room for hope. In the afternoon’s
ferocity, tar, grouting the planks like the glue
of family, melts to the run of a child’s licorice stick.
Wet decks crack, testing the wood’s mettle.
Distilled from evaporating brine, salt
dusts the floor, tickling with the measure
into time and the thirst trapped below.
II
The captain’s new cargo of Igbos disturbs him.
They stand, computing the swim back to land.
Haitians still say: Igbo pend’c or’ a ya!
But we do not hang ourselves in cowardice.
III
Sold six times on the journey to the coast,
once for a gun, then cloth, then iron
manilas, her pride was masticated like husks
of chewing sticks, spat from morning-rank mouths.
Breaking loose, edge of handcuffs held high
like the blade of a vengeful axe, she runs
across the salt scratch of deck,
pain deeper than the blue inside a flame.
IV
The sound, like the break of bone
could have been the Captain’s skull
or the musket shot dropping her
over the side, her chains wrapped
around his neck in dance.
AUTHOR: Christopher Abani a.k.a. Chris Abani, born Tuesday 27 December 1966 in Afikpo, Ebonyi State of Nigeria, West Africa.
Chris Abani was born in Afikpo, Nigeria, to a Nigerian father and an English mother. In 1966 he fled Nigeria with his mother and 4 siblings during the Biafran War which lasted from 1967 to 1970. The family was in England for 3 years before returning to Nigeria. Since 2001, he has lived in the U.S.A.
At age 10, Abani published his first piece of short fiction. He published his first novel, Masters of the Board (Delta, 1984), in Nigeria aged 16. It book was a thriller about an ex-Nazi officer attempting a coup in Nigeria. Its publication resulted in Abani being accused of providing instructions for General Mamman Vatsa’s conspiracy to overthrow President Ibrahim Babangida, and leading to Abani being imprisoned for 6 months.
Abani’s poetry collections include There Are No Names for Red (Red Hen Press, 2010), illustrated by the writer Percival Everett; Sanctificum (Copper Canyon Press, 2010); Daphne’s Lot (Red Hen Press, 2003); and Kalakuta Republic (Saqi Books, 2000). Abani’s other published fiction works are The Secret History of Las Vegas (Penguin Publishing Group, 2014); Song for the Night (Akashic Books, 2007), a PEN/Beyond Margins Award-winner, Becoming Abigail (Akashic Books, 2006); GraceLand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), winner of a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and Sirocco (Swan, 1987).
Formerly a professor in the department of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside, Abani is currently a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Board of Trustees Professor of English and comparative literary studies at Northwestern University. He lives in Chicago.
Naija Philia! 
Leave a comment