Monday, April 12, 2021

OMOTUNDE OREDIPE—"IF I DON'T DIE." (Issue 21)

IF I DON'T DIE

News reaches us of men burning

at home. The police disperse

the crowd with tear gas and bullets.

We have all seen the footage. I can

still smell the fear, that Saturday afternoon

when the air crackled as the rifles chorused.

My father told me that during the war

the children were told to dive into the

gutters if the ground tremored or planes

roared overhead. I imagine my father

in a ditch somewhere, his skinny arms

flat in front of him, his nose in the dust,

as I hold my own breath under the bed,

in the dimming light of the guestroom.

Father Lord, If I don’t die

I promise to tell daddy about the TV stand I broke.

Amen.


 

ABOUT THE POET 

Omotunde Oredipe was born and raised in Lagos and studied at South Carolina State University, where he served as the Poet Laureate (2016–2017) and founded the Poetry & Ideas Organization. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Southampton Review, and The Carolina Quarterly.

 

ABOUT SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW 

We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it.

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