NIGERIAN VILLAGES

 

Some writers marry other ones

it seems the natural course

but she has never read a book,

in fact she hardly learned to read.

In Nigerian villages, they say,

you have to pay to go to school.

Her father was a teacher too;

in time I've come to understand

that this is just an economic irony

of life down there, however,

she can handle a sewing machine,

make clothes, cook plantains,

construct wigs from human hair,

dismember a goat in record time;

balance a suitcase on her head

each time we need to move.

After seven years I'd say I'm cool

with these skills, this situation

living without literary discussion.

 

Published in The Blue Nib, number 36, December 2018. Editors Shirley Bell, Dave Kavanagh.