Poetry
Elsewhere
By Clifton Gachagua
Wash the heart in sunset purple,
cellophane and a voice recorder in hand,
take it out for a stroll in the open field.
Buy a prosthesis if that is what you need,
mind the spiral lanes of games
left behind by children who now play elsewhere.
Welcome the new state of wakefulness:
(his remains were removed
and a cenotaph was placed at the original grave)
Cenotaph:
a tomb or a monument erected
in honor of a person whose body
is elsewhere.
Clifton Gachagua won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets from the African Poetry Book Fund for his Madman at Kilifi, to be published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2014. His poems have appeared in Kwani? and Saraba.
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