By: Basit Olatunji

(For ill-fated husbands)

could this be a woman
or a monstrous monster?
think she’s a woe-man
worse than a human
before her husband came
to relieve her parents
of their desperate daughter
it’s a pity, he never knew
he had brought home
a trouble for a wife…
a monster for a mother…
a woe-man for a woman
he never knew he had
for a minute moment
subdued a wildfire
that would later boom
into an infernal doom
he never pondered
why such a beauty
would have betrayed
the longing eyes of teeming suitors
he saw a booty for scoop
and dashed at it like a brakeless car
under the fatal feet of a drunken driver
so reckless like a promiscuous dog
with restless legs to run astray
in wayward wanderings
now the then lonesome lass
now has fireballs of bad bad words
rolling out of her bad bad mouth
in her stomach ooze
a steam of bad bad thoughts
corrosive enough to burn off
your big big dreams
and dampen the stream
of your huge huge hopes

*****

Basit Olatunji is a Nigerian poet, editor and essayist. Some of his poems have been published in Ijagun Poetry Journal and New Asian Writing. He is on the editorial team of Ijagun Poetry Journal