after Ogoniland
Oh oilman, why do you do us this way? Again, with the exploitation, again with the abandonment. Once more, with the dash. Once more, with wellheads full of sweet crude. The land, just a drawerful of dead mullets. A drawerful. Just rusty pipes and oily mud. The swamp so oily it stinks of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation. What is ecological trauma? Luckily, my mother is no longer suffering. She is dead. Her fish pond burnt to ashes. Their scales gleaming in its red embers. Home which the world supposed not to see has been dying, gutted with flames. And now, I don't want to dream. Once more, the spills persist. Periwinkles are dead! My aunty said. Our oil on full display at the fair. Were they wearing suits? Neocolonialism such a formal sin. Here we go again, my mother beside me, long ago, (which feels like my distant future). Warmed all day in the creek with her take out fish pepper soup. I haven’t eaten that sauce in years. Such sweet sauce, homely-cooked it was. Though everyone knows what an ecological refugee means. They never talk about how it all starts with spillage. It’s early spring and the usual birds are not here. The air with its unbearable stench cuddles this wetland with grief, so high, its toxic.