Poetry by Omotoyosi Salami: The March at Dawn

The March at Dawn

The gender that is not emotional is shaking and waging wars.

Men are tearing their clothes & straining their face muscles screaming

themselves hoarse, &

marching up and down, demonstrating

immense anger, and for what.

The only thing that can make a properly masculine man cry

is a feminine woman who refuses to bring herself down for him.

Women of these times like and want their backs straight as they are made.

A woman is born with a load on her back. Even before

she ever becomes a mother, she is already saddled

with the responsibility of catering to

and upholding men’s egos. And we say

‘We are tired’.

We say this in words and in actions: We are not your mothers.

But men – who are not emotional – are angry and livid that

we no longer understand how to

treat them as heads of houses and babies at the same time.

Look here, we are no longer submitting. Adjust. Clutch your mother’s

wrapper and

beg her to teach you what she knows of cooking. A man

who does not eat will starve – that is how the Lord made it.

And who are we to question that?

Oppressors do not usually see the oppressed stretching their limbs.