Silence is a bang—
my ears bleed like a hole guns make.
A clock is dead for ticking
The time keepers keep day and night still.
Every word is blood from my slit throat—
kind I wear plenty concealer to decorate.
Mother’s tongue drags a wet piece of shore up a ladder
through a door that opens into a hole guns make.
My grandmother’s womanhood is a silent shot on a coast.
It strays into mother— I’m never born.
In a true story, a girl is taken
and her tongue circumcised. with a manhood.
Today, out the windowsill,
Two crows tells me of revolution
Yet, here in my corner room,
It’s still yesterday like dust chatter in air.
When grandmother was taken for DTP,
I did not mourn,
I was not born.
Read – Genital Tale – A Poem by Nzere Chinedu, Nigeria