Badagry

Lagos, port of origin from which your mother was missing until

she surfaced in the lagoon, and again, in the city under the rock.

You, child named after the possible joy of a mother who escaped

slaver’s bay, in your travel might have met a child of the Morgan or

Taylor who owned your mother. Perhaps he is an educator like you.

You and he, ignorant of your relation, drinking black tea from black pitchers.

[abigail]

Friend of all our mothers. Property of Taylor, Miller, and Brown.

First named for proximity in sound to birthname, Àbíkẹ. Then Frances,

named after the ship’s origin. Then Dead Frances, this time for the dark

soil of her skin. Her war was to stand alone in the glory of the morning

light but the broken bones of her back kept her in the earth.

[thomas]

Father Thomas saved our ancestors in the name of his lord. I want him

undead and locked up. I want his favorite students from his boys-only

missionary school returned from England. I want his hands away

from their thighs. I want to meet him in 1842, to say, “Thomas,

don’t wear a cassock.”

[ransome]

Named after unpaid fee because captors don’t own the land or

what lies therein. Named for the death in your pocket. A name

whose origin you’ve claimed embarrasses you. If allowed,

you will gouge the eyes of the one who made you a subject of the empire.

[crowther]

Any position regarding a slave master’s name is political. To take one

is to deem oneself an equal. To reject is to resist what exactly,

if you’ve lost all ties to home? It’s ancient wisdom that distress awaits

the child who strays too far from home. But nothing is said of the child

whose home is razed. For you, I’m asking, who rewards hungry children?

[kuti]

A prophesy that you will not die. Named so because the children

before you are dead. Their bodies were burned as

offerings to the god of your fathers. This name can also

be a plea for you to not leave me alone with the empty room of your body.

[soyinka]

Son of many wizards. You rewrote the books of our masters.

This time we have names that don’t mean darkness. For twenty years

of rain, I have worked your name into a prayer that keeps me during

the storm. I have slapped clay into the face of your effigy. Wake up. Roar like a god.

[moremi]

You imagine that the world is yours, too. That you could step

into the light. The world closing in on you, until it feels like a womb.

You have fought for your share of plum. You have won a space by the fire.

But who will sit with you? Who will watch you when you sleep?

[efunsetan]

There are no flowers for the custodian of death

murdered by slaves. I have no problem with your being left out

of the books. Your erasure is a kind of silence. The bodies

of 41 severed heads remember how they break from a falling

machete shining in the glorious light of dawn.

[abiku: sickle cell disease]

Kumapayi. Durosinmi. Malomo. So many names. So many graves

for dead children. How do I say at ten I had more friends among the dead

than the living? I say the children of my neighborhood houses

are extinct. Or my mother prays I don’t die in three languages.

[hubert]

I imagine you working on a dance. But you are dead,

and the drums have stopped. You have joined the horizon

which is why I have seen the air wave its hands of leaves and tree branches.

I have seen lakes shimmering in daylight. Some say these are signs

of your visit. Some cry, superstitious. What do you believe?