issue 7
// poetry
Wild is not welcome
by Basseyanwan Usieremfon Bassey
1. Everyone here has tasted hunger, because everyday, what you want at breakfast is
served at dinner, and every night, the wine tastes like water, the sweetness is
distilled, and every kind Attendant promises “Tomorrow will be better”.
2. To rebel, I shattered porcelain in the dining, cut my veins with them, wept, wanted
to die.
3. Sick / bedridden / stuck / here, we live the way they want us to / access the needs
they choose for us / meet the expectations required of us: whisper, complain,
lament, careful with strange innovation, wild is not welcome, calm down: what is
meant for you will find you.
4. An ex-convict wanders the world at liberty, she dips hands into dirt in Calabar or
Mumbai, and makes a child smile, or turns her hijab into a bandage in Maiduguri or
Gaza, making the rising sun her twin.
5. In this castle, we are
ordinary girls
ordinarily hopeful
ordinarily changing nothing
ordinarily exchanging dreams for survival.
In this castle,
desire is a burden
but I wear it like jewellery
and no one compliments
and no one cares
what I become or not
and whatever becomes of me too
because I am not special.
6. There is a tunnel on which we kiss the world on the outermost parts,
we collect sympathy and give back empathy
and by leaving this castle, we live.
about the author // Basseyanwan Usieremfon Bassey
| Basseyanwan Usieremfon Bassey is an Ibibio poet from Nigeria. Her second chapbook, Courageous, is a Pengician Poetry Chapbook Prize runner-up. She is an African Writers Awards in Poetry longlistee and has featured in six anthologies, including Tales and Twists and The Aftermath (Tales from the Other Land, 2019 & 2022). Basseyanwan’s poems live or will live with The Ugly Review, Poets Choice, Shadowplay, Triune, Writers Space Africa, Cultural Daily, and elsewhere. She enjoys playing tennis when she is not working or writing. On X & IG, she answers @basseyanwanb. |
Instagram & X: @basseyanwanb
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