Cannibal

Abstract

Cannibal D. M. Aderibigbe (bio) Àbúrò mi owón,* this was how the day unfolded from your mouth: mama mi, ebi npa mi.** Mother peeled, slashed and mashed a tuber of yam to feed three sets of teeth. Blue sun, hatched from a matchstick burnt beneath mother’s ceramic pot. We salivated; slices of yam softened. We gnashed our teeth; slices of yam perished. My mother’s cheeks moved in a motion only happiness understood. My father filled the room with curses, His vociferousness beat in our hearts, as thunder on the walls of a building; His empty stomach, a bowl of anger. In a room built with our silence, my mother’s pains tore afternoon apart like thunderclap; my ravenous father was hitting my mother. D. M. Aderibigbe D. M. Aderibigbe is coeditor of the anthology, More Than a Number: Poems and Prose for Baga. His first full-length work, My Mothers’ Songs and Other Similar Songs I Learnt, received special mention in the 2015 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. His poetry also appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Hotel Amerika, Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore, RHINO, Stand, and Weave, among others, and has been featured on Verse Daily. Footnotes * Àbúrò mi owón: my precious younger sibling. **. mama mi, ebi npa mi: mother, I’m hungry. [End Page 583] Copyright © 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press and Saint Louis University