Back to Issue 16.

in my country

Ayòdéjì Israel

the church, these days, is a house of slaughter 

in my country. i am sorry to protect your pain. 

the earth does not wonder again if black boys 

are daily in its shelter. this land does not query 

the digger anymore about its doggedness. 

i am not my country. in my church, we were fifty 

reaching God, stretching our lips to gulp answers 

to our prayers, snatching hope from heaven's realm 

and planting it on the bosom of our hearts, without 

any stench of sin, without a comma of blasphemy

sheltering on our tongues. my city is mad—at 

my religion: some people offered their bodies 

as living sacrifices to their Lord, but my country 

snatched their breath before it could touch the face

of the sky. my city is wary of everything that talks 

about God: it throws fire at innocent bodies; it uses 

straw to suck blood from the soft throats of innocent

worshippers. blood: is normal in the house of God, 

ask Elijah. but here, blood: is not for cleansing, 

it is for victory; in my country, it is a matter of bravery,

and bullet is its accomplice. in a church, last year, 

humans were slaughtered, and God was un-mad.

maybe men were lambs in those days. in Owo, men 

were used to worship [g]od in another way. their bodies

were shattered in front of their [g]od for him to witness

his creations fall and crumble like a standing glass.

all i see is worship. all i see is where men leave 

their bodies and gather in heaven. in my city, all i see 

are bodies, used by bodies as a point of contact 

to the creator of bodies.

Writer’s Notebook

In 2022, a massacre happened in one of the biggest churches in my country during a Sunday worship service. Some unknown gunmen rushed inside the church in the middle of the worship and gunned innocent people down. Blood splashed on the floor of the church, and numerous newspapers plastered this heartbreaking screen on their faces. It broke my heart; it still breaks it anytime I remember it. So I decided to write about it. Those innocent worshippers became memory and stayed with me.

About the writer