Country: Canada
BAYOWA, Ayomide is a Nigerian-Canadian poet, and filmmaker. He studies Theatre Studies and Creative Writing at the University of Toronto, Canada. He was a long-list of the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize 2018, shortlist of the 2018 Eriata Oribabhor’s Poetry Contest, 2018 and 2019 Christopher Okigbo Interuniversity Poetry Prize, the runner up of the 2020 On-Spot Poetry Writing Contest and the winner of the 2020 July’s Open Drawer Poetry Contest. He is the author of ‘Stream of Tongues, Watercourse of Voices.
FIRST DEGREE MURDER
What- another brick of Jericho is connubial like divorce?
At the time, it seemed like time surged aback the ancient Christ’s counts as I scanned the usual twelve disciples bar-coding the jury box.
B.C, the redolence of aloof feet, smoked gullet, and
moist mouthparts jarred my torpor before the gavel rattled.
I remained an appendix of statutory looks, crippled by academic paralegalism.
Abraham Unharmed!
Whom we expected walked in, sprouting grey strands on the bark
of his head- sour skin, while an infinity amulet coiled his wrists.
Volcanic murmurs ping-ponged acoustic ears.
The calm clerk advertised sealed lips with a life-large demonstration.
All took a vow of silence, and ovate flowers cramped sharply from my abdomen.
Abraham! Oh, Abraham!! Suddenly amnesic.
His forgotten friction ridges patterned forensic sellotapes,
whirl-pooled over the murder knife in his son’s throat.
His defence; tap-like, ran out of essential crammed judicial salivas.
His dandruff-fur wig itched his objections; too curled to untangle.
Stand-taking, cripple-healed, Abraham’s oaths, hooked Adam’s apple in his windpipe.
His divorced wife sat empty as a chipped jug, a torn canvas in the court’s gallery.
But what wealth had a man who lost his sweat, mind and son?
Silence and the air hung as curious blankets about the acrimony wonder alimony spells upon matrimony.
He snorted like a bass singer, remoulding vibration into shatters of fragile listeners.
The case zipped on a blurry eye, and my journal, a staffless sheet.
A.C, the police escorted him out like trafficking flies.
Not even the bailiff saw that I had an undue bleeding cascade
in my underwear that could’ve attracted the first-degree murder.
Though he rotated his surveillance eyes tirelessly.
Note- B.C (Before the case), (A.C — After the case).
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