African Writing Online; Poetry; Amatoritsero Ede;



	Amatoritsero Ede Ede won the All-Africa Christopher Okigbo Prize for Literature in 1998 with his Collected Poems: A Writer’s Pains and Caribbean Blues. He is Editor of Sentinel Online Poetry magazine, and in the editorial team of the online PONAL African literature site established for Carleton University, Canada, where he is based. His work appears in many journals and anthologies of African poetry. Ede was also Second Prize Winner at the May Ayim Award: International Black German Literary Prize, 2004. Not in Love is a excerpt from the forthcoming collection, Globetrotter & Hitler’s Children


	Not in Love

	d this slap-dash of wave on wave thigh on thigh groin on butt as the tongue of water drinks the banks a sloppy thirsty mongrel sucked the nipple howled whined in lilt and lisp of wet-slippery ecstasy licked by the waves in turn and re-turn how did it transpire! e not in love with a skinhead who is not in love with christ or krishna the dog barked in one huge bound upon a giddy crest mist-headed and behold papa hemingway riding the lion mane of a tidal bore in sympathy his cheeks flushed from cramped watery grave windy hair blown back flush milk-white back into breakers the waves unites us and hemingway on the seaway he pleads here is love which is life struggling with a whale and a whale of a lot of sharks knife-toothed and soon to be food for bigger fish like Pi the thing that crowd his mind and that room his life boat was tiger hyena and sword-fish dog howled the priapic hold of water tossed and buffed by cleft-passion deeper than diver then gargled papa Hemingway in the rood rudder away rudder away mercy for more room gaff! there should be longsuffering gone to its own noises sea and sperm fuse in amphibious incandescence the child was heartburn how did it transpire! f burnt the dog barked beowoulf beowoulf but tumult of sea or chain-saw snap of shark or neo-nazi is no classic of literature nor is the studded fist of a skin-head down in dessau a Nazi is a Nazi warned the waves write ‘neo’ on sea-bed as long as you dare in longhand or short it won’t dent water g not in love because the baby can be a terror of water where a vegetable mouth should drink of life in sinful gulps sift sun-seeds spit out the bitter grain the black martyr could not afro-German he fell on a knife on the road to corn al-Qaida-ed under a iron democracy in gehenna rachel will weep and weep h where did you so lay your awkward angolan head to waylay stones and rocks so worry fist-cuffs chain- and baseball bats knifed-boots and jack why harass the sons of moloch hitler’s children gentle in mighty mail coats monster-lambs sworn to perpetuate the gory father i how did it transpire that you traversed the ‘national free zone’ your ugly black face in tow did you not know of the head’s duty to the legs that the one should not lead the other astray what is your rage O adriano that you must trouble these spoilt kids so ajantala rotten to the bone-marrow will have mother’s doting right eye for dinner they burst your left eye did they as masons break stones break your bones to build hate’s sanctuary they did what is this amour with men in armour			Coming Home