meaning we had to work towards it.
(meaning) we split our tongue a forked road
and walked down the trellises of it.
(meaning) we made ourselves into severed fruit.
(meaning) our juice was what grew out of us.
(meaning) we had to learn english like the work of hands.
(meaning) we had to strain ourselves in order to countenance it.
(meaning) we built walls thick enough to walk through.
(meaning) we circled each wall six times
& seven times the seventh day.
(meaning) we learned birth pains through the mouth.
(meaning) this language gestated.
(meaning) we were princes before we came here.
(meaning) the royalties gutted out our mouths.
(meaning) we worked the weekends at mcdonalds.
(meaning) we worked the weekdays at kfc.
(meaning) we brought home greasy buckets
steamed with chicken.
(meaning) we fed our children loam.
(meaning) we thought this land would find us
something we’d been missing.
(meaning) we always meant to go back home.
(meaning) we were once flush and verdant being.
(meaning) we never thought of ourselves as anything
more than watering hole.
(meaning) always staring into the futurity of ourselves.
(meaning) we raised our children as appendix.
(meaning) we wanted something of them.
we carried them into this promised land
like the twelve tribes of judah.
then the milk went sour & the honey
burst the comb.
Copyright © 2016 Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah. Originally published in Bird’s Thumb (October, 2016). Used with the permission of the author.