Roasted yam, boiled yam, coco-yam
Pounded yam, cassava meal – akpu, alibor,
Pounded in dripping sweat,
Served in clay pots,
Swallowed with soup of termites
Soup of grasshoppers, mushroom
Soup of snail and bush meat
Vegetable soup, okra soup
Mingled with periwinkle – hot, delicious, tantalizing
African salad,
Sliced oil bean – ugba, ukpakala,
With onions to spice
Soaked in red oil laced with red pepper
Sandwiched with bush meat and termite
Garden eggs, sliced cassava
Ihe agworogwo – food concoction,
Swallowed with sweet palm wine
In wooden cups and gourds of calabash
African food and nice,
Ukwa – bread fruit – fried or cooked
Roasted maize, blackened pear
Chewed and swallowed
Under roof of our open thatch house
Where we gather at cold nights
As rain falls
To roast, chew and get warm
In native Africa…
© 2017 By Benedict Ahanonu
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