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Tolu Ogunlesi

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London Bridges

We ride a cosmopolitan storm, a double-decker chaos.
We ride an empire

under the threat of revenge.
Black faces look

and hold secrets
of the coming apocalypse. Shhh.

Don’t tell the queen. Don’t let
Number 10 in on this. Mop your floors,

as though you had resigned to fate. Turn
the other cheek. Allow the old to shit

all over you, as though it were a privilege.
Until the time shall come –

and soon is – when the empire will
expire. Then we shall rename Buckingham Palace,

dredge the Thames to the Atlantic,
so the bones of the Chained

shall clasp the souls of the Owners.
We shall teach taxi-meters

to measure the sins of Homo Superiors
and count the bound cries

of sub-men;
tutor the buses to stop

at each ancient landmark scattered
between Zanzibar and here;

reconfigure coin slots
to spit out words like nigger.

Shhh. Don’t tell the queen.

Tolu Ogunlesi lives in Asaba, Nigeria. His collection, Listen to the Geckos Singing from a Balcony, was published in the UK by Bewrite Books in 2004. His poetry has also appeared in Sable, Sentinel Quarterly and Times Arts Review, amongst many others.

Page(s) 56

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