That hour when Nairobi chooses to
catch her breath rather
than choke on sunrise and audacious tweeting
my brother is listening to Mali’s Contradiction
as I am chased by a turkey I must slay
in ludicrous terror-lilted fitful
moonwake; such a morning when a lover
who’s known enough caskets to tell
the interment of love, is warned to barricade
a gabion lest leaking be a thread a haunting
reels itself onto, out of a blazing grave
into the wounds of a flag ruffled by recoil and ricochetting.
In an ocean of dysphoria we stampede into
the lower house and rob it of the dignity of a mace,
it is hunger that floods us here, see how we
take selfies with middle class pilau
in protest of a vote for a finance bill
for which a Somali mother praises Allah
when her son is one of them that lay in the street
wrapped in the flag, one of them that won’t
find their way home for the crime of waving
the country’s keffiyeh,
Directorate of Criminal Investigation vehicles abducting
a woman sobbing in the mist of tear gas.
That morning when Nairobi gasps, you should see my brother
shoot his shooter with a DSLR.
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