I write in an accent interposed by war
school closure, hunger and starvation.

I write in an accent interposed by the absence
of my father, the word that I stutter to utter
due to the vague memory imposed by time
despite the good things said about him.

I write in an accent interposed
by my mother’s many attempts
to wrap her arms around the eight of us
the way a hen would spread her wings
to protect her chicks from the hawk.

I write with an accent interposed
By the stay-at-home policy of the IPOD,
Oh! Sorry, the Boko Haram activities, the struggle
to speak Atyap, English, Hausa, and Pidgin English,
a complication that tells the story of how Africa
was bargained during the amalgamation,
a composite you fail to see.

When I opened my mouth to speak
my tongue sweats.
It struggles to say conscientiously without stuttering.

You fail to see my soul and focus on me
as I stutter to meet you halfway, chewing my tongue
to say the word intermittently,
So I drowned at sea.

Abraham Kedong Ali is an emerging poet from Atyap land, a minority ethnic group in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. He holds an MA in English and Literary Studies from the University of Jos and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. His work was shortlisted for the Garden City Literary Festival, and his poetry has appeared in The Wole Soyinka: Herald at 90 anthology, Ultramarine Literary Review, and other publications. Drawing deeply from the oral traditions of his heritage, his poems explore themes of memory, displacement, and resilience.