A Cyborg God, My Country and Her People: A Holocaust, An Iconography of War and Grief
God, a cyborg, holds the earth with his metal hands, redeeming the sun to Himself. Is He not
wonderful, filching pearls from us? An aristocratic behaviour. A sword with two eyes: happiness
and its sibling. God’s acre, a cathedral for the dead. He furloughs personage to sleep, plunging
his iron hands into homes first, then bodies until they are breathless. A crimson rose with the
chirping of birds. Do the lenses in his binocular not magnify beyond the sky? Or how come
he fails to see, in the threater section, red and black maquillage on the breast of the roads; She, a
country—Nigeria, and our hands? In today’s newspaper, bodies laid there, speechless. Terrorists,
blood coursing through their veins, swore to experiment on more specimens—our bodies—with
bullets and grenades. Sterile patients with a Colloq broke ransom. Not even God is safe in this
place, because anyone who carries him on their tongue dies, and my grandfather too. What loss
has inflected in me through this incision is grievance, and I have not found a cure. Every
midnight I book for cure: before I enter into God’s alcove, I sanitize my body with sterilized
water; immerse my Qalb in faith.. I know, one day, I, not only me, will survive. I whistle the
language He understands into the zephyr: وارحمنى اغفرلى ياربى. That is, God, before you touch me
with a scalpel, disinfects me from my sins; then, rehab me with blessing. Nirvana. In Maiduguri,
I asked what it costs to get home and they answered, “your life with a touch of a ransom to settle
life-threatened nurses that help patients in captivity. ” As if I will go extinct. A stereotypical
behaviour. I think of my country, and the arithmetic says dead | blood | no future. Here, everyone
who dials for cure from illness, dies unhealing in this hill road. God, my country and her people:
a holocaust, an iconography of war and grief.
Contributor’s Bio
Ismail Yusuf Olumoh is a Nigerian creative writer, teacher, a poet, a spoken word artiste, a graphics designer, a content creator, and a video editor. His works are published and forthcoming in Nanty Greens, Eboquills, Scrub ill Press, Literary Yard, Fevers of the mind, Poemify Publishers, Festival for poetry, De Curated, Synchronized Chaos, Willi Wash, World Planet Anthology, and others. He writes from Ilorin, Kwara State. When he is not writing, he enjoys reading or cooking. He tweets @icreatives0
