Fooling Around?

Fooling around?

“Fool,” you said on your way to the local Basket and Bottle

The off license down our road as you walked pass Susanne.

Susanne Atewogbade smiled as though nothing had happened.

Susanne Atewogbade walked on by following her gramp’s

Wise, wise words… “they are only fooling around! It’s nothing”.

Susanne Atewogbade was proud of her trans and homo status.

“It’s a shame,” she said. “I’d never go back to Nigeria, never!”

“But why not?” asked Max a week after rejecting Susanne’s hand.

Susanne Atewogbade felt uneasy knowing Nigeria’s hateful fever.

“Was Max, her friend, a reverse homophobe?” she thought.

Susanne Atewogbade laughed when she heard Max’ tittle-tattle

Away, “whom does he think he’s fooling?” Was Max a friend at core?

Susanne Atewogbade reported her to the police and they laughed

Too. Oh the laughed and laughed, “Sorry love, stop being a bore!”

“What buffoons,” thought Susanne Atewogbade of the uniformed thugs!

“Are they fooling around? I was just being me,” said Susanne, smiling.

“When Doreen said that. I’m just a being in a world of folly!”

Susanne Atewogbade loved watching or listening to transphobes

As they fooled around, as they taught children to bully

Those like Susanne Atewogbade: gay with friend who weren’t

What they seemed; what they seemed; who weren’t what they seemed.

Susanne Atewogbade was never one for making a fuss at homophobes.

One day, having experienced a transphobe’s transphobia during a call.

Susanne Atewogbade felt Max, her friend, sucked up to transphobes.

“But why?” Susanne Atewogbade asked her gramp who laughed; laughed?

Yes, Laughed saying, “What did I tell you, Susanne dear? People just

Love fooling around!” Susanne Atewogbade’s smile waned for the first

Time in years. “Don’t let that stop you darling, they are just insecure.

That’s why,” said gram, dead now ten years. Susanne felt a thirst

For life, so she grabbed it smiling and get on with it still smiling, smiling!

Mia Nikasimo © October 2010

The Job!

African Woman

I’m an African woman whether you perceive me or not…

I’m aware of you war speak in the neighbourhoods of our old masters,

I’m an African woman whether you able to conceive me or not…

I’m aware of your fears in the unsavoury words of soiled plasters

Thanks but no thank you…

I am the African woman with a deep and broken voice, so what?

I am the African woman, the thorn in your self righteous cis-gender skin,

I am the African woman, bearer of broad shoulders, that carry me forth,

That carry you too, that carries us all, blind as we were in binary fixation,

You love your order and hate what you call, “your disorder!” that you say

Unsettles everything even Mother Earth but we are all mother earths…

‘You could hide the noise you provoke in the densest jungle, out of sight!

You could, for our sakes, not speak your name so we may feel right about

Ourselves, our ways of life before you came along.

You could have walked on by when in our selfishness we rebuffed you with

Vicious insults and laughed at our own insipid insults cast your way…’

Thanks but no thanks…

I am an African woman and proud. I am the descendant of proud women of

Strength: Healers, warriors, life givers, peace brokers who have sported a

Tash proudly in the face of narrow streamed conventions all cissexual. I am,

I am, I am Amina of Zaria, Tara the saviour, Oya of Niger and Benue Rivers,

Moremi of Ajasoro fame and Fumilayo Kuti of the Kalakuta Republic…

So what, if I dare to say so myself… I am an African woman after all.

I am the woman you desire whom because of your desire you must in turn,

Hate and hate for you face saving pride. Can you have forgotten aready that:

‘Pride is the beginning of the end, of ruination, or cataclysmic erasure of self!’

Hold a moment:

Are you a closet lesbian? Are you a closet gay man? Are you closer straight or

Are you closeting something or the other that you dare not speak of in broad

Daylight?

I am the African woman, the woman that stands proud on the battle field of

Will, words and if must do, war… Of Kiriji, of Aresa, of Gbogun, of two world

Wars, of Egba, of Ede, of Oshogho you name them, I’ve been there shoulder to

Shoulder with the warriors of all time…

So you did not know. So you did not hear. So you saw to it that no chronicle was

Ever to be kept, nor my name spoken but so far, I’m doing well enough by me,

By you my sisters, by you my brothers. To all your slurs just this…

Thanks but no thank you…

I’m doing well enough all by myself… I am an African woman, aren’t I?

Mia Nikasimo © September 2010