the rescuer
is what my siblings
think of me now
it doesn’t matter
what my body
communicates
or how I have
designed my life
I am without a father
twenty-nothing
jobless
self-schooling
but I know that
whenever
mother calls me
ọkọ mi
which means
the family is starving
I must
go out by the butchery
buy meat
and then pepper
and two kongos of garri
even if
I must starve
or steal
or snatch from a
lifeless thing
I want to ask
is this how it also happens
in every home
without a head—
the first son
coming of age
watching himself run over
hurdles 10 inches
taller than him?
Hassan A. Usman, NGP II, is a Black Poet and a lover of cats. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Folksway Press, World Voices Magazine, Isele Magazine, Riverstone, Blue Route Journal, Blue Marble Review, Welter Journal, Invisible Lit, The Madrigal Press, Paper Lanterns, Trampset, Icefloe Press, Olumo Review, Lunaris Review, Afrocritik, Poetrycolumn-NND, and elsewhere. He’s an alumnus of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship 2022. Hassan enjoys cooking, listening to Nigerian street music, and juggles writing with modelling. Say hi to him on Twitter or Instagram @Billio_Speaks