Somtochukwu Onwusika Poet Narrative

The Drum Remembers

Small in the dust,
I watched the Izaga spin loose from itself,
ogene ringing like a struck bell in the chest,
and asked my father what the drummer's hands were saying.
He looked at the ground before he looked at me.

"Nne, the drum remembers."

and I carried that unanswered for years
before I understood it was the answer.

A friend once told me
that their mother despised my brown skin and full lips.
Even though I spoke in an accent unfettered,
my name alone was a reminder raw enough,
of the ground I am autochthonous to,
of a division that splattered blood across the landscape of God's own creation
like an nwatakiri let loose with a fistful of red paint.

Nne, the drum remembers.

Ndewo! Then a catch, a swallow, a switch to Yoruba mid-breath
the second I entered the room,
a door closed softly so I'd know without being told:
this circle was drawn and I was standing outside its ink.
Omo Igbo, they'd call after me, half a laugh in it,
and I learned early that laughter can double as a door,
closing so gently you don't hear it lock.

Nne, the drum remembers.

And sometimes I hold my peace during the anthem.
How do I "Nigeria, we hail thee"
when the land under my feet won't call me native;
when tongue fights tribe and tribe fights tongue;
and we build our fences tall, mistaking height for safety;
insisting on separation, on exclusion.
Yet to the ones who first carved the coast into counties,
we are only ever this: darker-skinned, undifferentiated, one.

Nne, the drum remembers.

Biafra, folded into textbooks like a stain someone tried to bleach out.
A war they say is over,
still living in the way my uncles go quiet
when certain years arrive in conversation
and even the drum goes silent.

Nne, the drum remembers.

But how can I forget?
The father of my father chattered in his sleep
when a door shut too fast.
Some sounds outlive the body that first flinched at them,
pass down not in words but in the startle,
so that a whole bloodline can still hear gunfire
in the click of a lock.

Nne, the drum remembers.

And not only in startle. In flesh, too.
Thirty months of blockade taught bodies to hoard
against a hunger that has not come again,
and taught their children's children's hearts
to keep storing what was never there to take.

Nne, the drum remembers. 
It will always remember. 
Even when I don't say Biafra; 
even when I don't say Igbo; 
even when I don't say home.

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