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.

                f

where all colours meet

a rainbow democracy

       signals spring

  in affairs of state

  our liberal estate

            weathers a conservative thaw

as spring-spruced statutes sparkle

           what green leaves and trees do too

                   happy as the wood worm is happy

*

                                                          g

                                                a yielding of earth

                                                    leaves soft patch

                                                for migrant foot

                                    plucked

                                                     from far-flung places

                                                             much like slugs

                                                             mud-plucked

                                                                     shelled

                                                                                           in silt

                                                           snow-cracked heels

                                                                in seasonal sludge

                                                                            frost-sutured foot

                                                          scalpel-paired

                                                               to true

                                                          bureaucratic ache

                                                            across equators

                                                            inch for heavy inch

                                                            each foot

                                                    widen with pain

                                                    twelve inches deep

                                                    with each official inch

                                                                                                     towards Canada

                                 tenderfoot!

                                          toronto is soft landing

                                                  and gauze