Chain Of Supply

“Geological past shapes biological present” —Blake De Pastino

sun-charred pits bloated with

bodies, sacks of bright-turquoise

shales. This biblical toil of progress's

expanding mouth. Each phone, a remote

gulag, each battery emaciated limbs

atomized to electrolyte. Here eats young

and old. Mothers in close-ups return to girls,

return before miscarriages, before their

fathers’ blood writhes a

cleft palate down the family tree to this

malleable, coltish frame of hills peppered

with bones like acres of rotting

fruit. Here, the immovable shroud of conflict,

the kind a féticheur's ear refuses its charged

cochlea, scours this land like the innards of

a lokole drum. East and South and North and

West rename this stalling country an alias of

slavery. Here, alluvial-churned ghosts nudge

us forward, backward where a sophist

representative denies the corpse

tally of dozens that find no bottom and empty into the

pliocene awaiting them as 35,000 grunts osmose

chests threaded with sticks and straws.

About the author

Benedict Hangiriza is a poet from Kampala Uganda. His poetry has so far been published in Swim Press, Kalahari Review and Writers Space Africa.