Central Market, Kaduna

Sarah Adeyemo

Savoury, the sweet hours of bargaining. The world stood still. So still you could see the market alive & glorious; fresh fishes from river gasping for home, meaning, anything is liable to displacement. Beside the fish seller stall, a vegetable seller preaches the miracle that holds a withered water leaf in a pot of soup. As if to prove Joy Harjo's theory that the world begins at a kitchen table. That even a dead thing could be given life in the kitchen. I am one of her believers haggling the price of a dead thing to be revived. Somewhere else, a pepper seller curses a woman who haggled his price down by half. The world focuses on his anger forgetting the calamity that the mouth holds. Forgetting we are all bounded by the curse of the creator; the gunmen will come again & the traders will forsake their goods for safety. At the end, a mother would not return. Or a mother would return with a bruised body and a dead child in her hand. A family will count their loss in multitude. I will carry the burden of death in my basket in place of yam tubers. The gun will continue to do its work. I will be among those who devote their life to Psalm 91, pleading to be salvaged from the snare of the fowler.

About Sarah Adeyemo

Sarah Adeyemo, SWAN IX, is a Nigerian poet, editor, writer, and spoken word artiste. The debut author of "The Shape of Silence". She draws inspiration from solitude and experiences. She is a fellow of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship. Sarah has work published/forthcoming in The Shallow Tales Review, The Muse Journal, The Weganda Review, Everscribe Magazine, Afrillhill Press, Poems For Persons Interest, Northern Writers Forum Journal, Eboquills, Rinna Lit. Anthologies, and elsewhere.