{"id":10733,"date":"2020-08-23T06:59:54","date_gmt":"2020-08-23T01:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/eyewitness-by-ajibola-tolase\/"},"modified":"2023-02-14T15:18:38","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T10:18:38","slug":"eyewitness-by-ajibola-tolase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/eyewitness-by-ajibola-tolase\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Eyewitness&#8221; by Ajibola Tolase"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-soundcloud wp-block-embed-soundcloud\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Eyewitness by Ajibola Tolase by Arc Poster\" width=\"580\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F865578130&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=870&#038;maxwidth=580\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>EYEWITNESS<\/strong><br>for Hauwa Liman<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hauwa has traced the history of her loss<br>beyond the city she was named Silence<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>as though her body were a living collection of sins.<br>A man is collecting his daughter\u2019s tears<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>in the pocket of his shirt. He presses her face to his chest<br>as though that could blind her from seeing the mortician<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>bent over her sister\u2019s body. The dead girl\u2019s eyes remain open<br>as if to memorize the world. Across the street,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>another man is drowning in tears. In this small town,<br>busy as a colony of bees, everyone is a ghost awaiting a grave,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and Hauwa, too, has come to meet with Death,<br>full beard and stabbing gaze which cuts through you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>before the blunt rays of sunshine in the desert heat of Borno.<br>It\u2019s the same city, where the red earth rose in the wind<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and a child swore it was the dead racing their horses of light.<br>I think of other cities unlike this, their geese-speckled fields<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and other birds beating their wings as they call for home.<br>The birds of Borno are silent witnesses, their songs<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>are buried in them. Herons and hornbills,<br>listening for the thud of falling bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ajibola Tolase<\/strong>, whose work has appeared in journals including <em>Faultline, Sand Journal<\/em> and <em>The Lifted Brow, <\/em>is a Poetry MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EYEWITNESSfor Hauwa Liman Hauwa has traced the history of her lossbeyond the city she was named Silence as though her body were a living collection of sins.A man is collecting his daughter\u2019s tears in the pocket of his shirt. He presses her face to his chestas though that could blind her from seeing the mortician [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"10084,10716,10705,10386","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"genre":[150],"publisher":[],"issue":[74],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3148],"topic":[3178],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10733"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=10733"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=10733"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=10733"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=10733"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10733"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=10733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}