CuerpoMatik

Fresh Agege Bread (2019) by @forafricans

(1) NIGERIA. Lagos. 2019. A street food seller, from Northern Nigeria, prepares chocolate milk for a customer in the morning.

(2) NIGERIA. Lagos. The town of Agege. 2019. Spokesman for Sarkin, Alhaji Musa Muhammed Dogonkadai, Alhaji Kabiru A. Dinar explains the early transportation of ‘Shackleford’ bread, and the emergence of bread production in Agege upon its disappearance.

Knows loss intimately,

carries whole cities in her belly.

As a child, relatives wouldn’t hold her.

She was splintered wood and sea water,

she reminded them of the war.

On her fifteenth birthday you taught her

how to tie her hair like rope

and smoke it over burning frankincense.

You made her gargle rosewater

and while she coughed, said

Macaanto, girls shouldn’t smell

of lonely of empty.

You’re her mother.

Why did you not warn her?

That she will not be loved

if she is covered in continents,

if her teeth are small colonies,

if her stomach is an island,

if her thighs are borders?

Who wants to lie down

and watch the world burn

in their bedroom?

Your daughter’s face is a small riot,

her hands are a civil war,

a refugee camp behind each ear,

a body littered with ugly things

but God,

doesn’t she wear

the world well. 

Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2012