Before that final slam of God’s hammer
upon the marble-back of night, unleashing dawn
like a shrill to do its work of disruption,
before Adhan & its tenor expanding
the world’s capacity for holiness, before
houseflies beating new routes into the air
on their way to the butcher’s slab,
a mother stands outside her house
sweeping dreams off the yard,
the cries of children rising like smoke from windows.
How her broom combs the sand into strips,
the swish of her strokes, the crescent
of her back, the integrity of her wrists.
Footsteps so light, they rebut gravity.
The taillight of her husband’s okada
disappears in the distance. Soon, the zigzag
of traffic, the confrontation with trucks,
that lotto of life itself. May calamity not claim
your head, she mutters in prayer,
the way it did your brother’s.
Pamilerin Jacob is a poet & editor whose poems have appeared in Barren Magazine, Agbowó, IceFloe Press, Palette, The Rumpus & elsewhere. He is the curator of PoetryColumn-NND, a poetry column in Nigerian NewsDirect, a national newspaper.