Ɛn Fata Nnipa/ Unsuitable Beings

when things fall apart and yet we’ll call it progress

Artwork by A.B. Godfreed

I knew a place
once
many called it comfort,
common place, complacence
while others wedge jittery in its
sense
less
no
less
stuck
in the carefulness of minority being.

It was a place
full of swimmers in el mar, a material morass,
drowning even,
but thinking themselves
afloat
right on top
high up, oh, in Jerusalem
when
Lord knows what is going
on
&
on
&
on
&
on
w/ a multitude of lives on the fringe
of conspicuous, consumptive,
opulence
gone awry
morals moribund, plus
too many
leading complicated lives
from simple mindsets,
where a 50-year-old
cougar,
triple motha
lands
on a young woman’s marital mattress
under the guise
of sisterhood —