Poetry by Eamy Mireku

What is a parasite?

The roommate who only knows how to take & take

The Falciparum travelling first class inside Oyarifa’s mosquitoes

A good Korean movie

A pipe dream that sucks your wherewithal and self-worth

The so-called lover whose ego is nourished by your misery & melancholy

Trauma that acquired time-travelling abilities and is now as omnipresent as the gods

The voice that flies from within a united body and leaves schisms in its trajectory

The colourless seed in us that sprouts & grows at the expense of our blackness

A malediction that climbs up the family tree and runs down the bloodline.

No, not these crazy rich saviours from where the sun rises—they did not steal our country’s riches and destroy our lands & waterbodies

No, not these beloved leaders of our beloved country—their gargantuan pockets did not create safe spaces & cool shades for these Trojan horses from the East.

No, not your partisan nature—it did not liquefy your brain and dissolve your common sense in the result.

DO YOU KNOW ATOPA ?

The kinetic fire in the dance

lifts you higher & higher

to the peak of Afadjato—high potential energy.

One stroke pushes you off the edge

& you spiral down in shivers,

breaking into pieces of sensitive skin

which mistake fingers for tingling pins.

There is heat here

It has nothing to do with climate change

or the hot Ghanaian Sunday sun.

You do not do the Atopa

& expect not to sweat.

Bio