“Hail & Brimstones in Sudan” by Adesina Ajala
Adesina Ajala, a 2022 Fellow of the Global Arts in Medicine (AiM), is a Cardiothoracic surgery enthusiast, training in post-grad surgical residency in Nigeria. He loves words. Their glitz, gleam & glories; fine & refined words blown from calloused hands & blistered lips.
Winner of the Inaugural Freedom Voices Poetry Writing Prize (2019) & Ayamba LitCast Essay Contest (2021). Adesina's works have appeared in The Nigeria Review, Afritondo, Parousia Magazine, Nantygreens, LAUMED Journal, The Wild Word, The Shallow Tales Review, Too Well Away Literary Journal & elsewhere.
Twitter: @adesina_ajala
Instagram: @adesina_ajala
Author Forward:
When I heard the news from Sudan, I immediately made a status update on my WhatsApp about returning to the poetry of Safia Elhillo, the Sudanese -American poet who writes for the broken home that Sudan is. I never return. Instead, I sat with myself, curating words & lines as peace offerings for the things I watch on TV and see on Facebook. Or, what else does a poet have for the things that ail?
The Poem in Which the Silent Agonies of Trapped Souls Gnash Teeth, or Hail & Brimstones in Sudan
Dark clouds gather & hail & brimstones fall in Sudan. Come,
come & see everyone running into things tender & haunting:
A baby is running into the hushed sighs of her mother. Her mother says
in Arabic, Fi alharb, la takul abdan ma yakfi. She says, In war, you don't eat enough.
A father is running into worthless currencies & unmet needs. The taps are
running out of water & thirst is widening, like an ocean gyre,
into torments. The embassies are running into the bellies
of cargo planes. Ghost streets sprout from noisy places. This poem is
running too, it is running me into enjambed imageries smeared with burnt flesh.
On Eid day, the muezzin's voice runs weary on empty fields in Darfur. Ramadan
ends in gun sounds & bullets ricocheting off hospital walls. In Khartoum,
a RSF soldier points gun at a fellow Sudanese in army wears & sputters blood
graffiti on a wall. A chick is snuggling round the carcass of its mother. Poet,
pray the soul of Sudan does not fall prey to itself. I watch a
Nigerian student begs to make it home in a TikTok video, & I enter
into a poem half done, because a war threatening my countryman
is not a fair muse. But let this poem save me first. This poem in which the silent
agonies of trapped souls gnash teeth like a child trembling with fever.
