This Country Keeps Unearthing Grief from Me

& I swear, I tried to swallow it.   Like a chasm,

I pushed the memories of each carnage down

 

my throat.   But she keeps pulling them out—

a stubborn unburial.   All the names of the dead

 

screeching as they slide off my teeth.   & Lord,

the abundance of our fallen.   I tried to plant a rose

 

for each head uprooted in Borno.   I ended up with

a thousand gardens sprawled across the land—

 

a choir of flowers heavying the wind.   Loss so thick,

the birds ache in their flight.   Trust me.   I have tried

 

to love this country, to write poems about her gold

& sing hymns for her people.   But how much praise

 

will erase a history of death?   How much praise will

pull the weapon out of its prey?   There is this story

 

we all carry near our chests.   We always hope if we

keep on telling it, it will soften & return a brother:

 

in the beginning, there is a gun.   Its mouth opens

& a mother runs with her boy.   But in each retelling,

 

it still ends the same: the bullet will always

outpace the body.   Even this poem is caught inside

 

its own labyrinth.   In every version, Nigeria

is a grave within a grave, within a grave.