Our African Meal Poem by Miracle Asuquo

Don't let your heart jump
because of the image of my meal
you bumped into
perhaps if the walls to your chest cracks
the kind gesture I could give is frown
after all who doesn't drink garri

tame your heart bit after bit
and watch the birds clap
who knows how the sparrows feed
yet you look my meal
like substance prepared by the dead

this cuisine has been our Fathers
even in their diet
so don't be too Americanized remember your skin
before this era of popcorn and ice cream
with emancipated elephant grasses
named salad
your tongue was buried in this diet
like a mother pig

sucking every quotient of nutrients
into the walls of your bones
even your mothers is a product of this meal.
don't be coy, look me in the eye
let your shoulders be seen like iroko
each time you take this meal
a meal birth out of cassava
a true African meal.