—for Professor Alofoje Unuigboje—

by Majekodunmi Oseriemen Ebhohon

The speaker has spoken.
The points were clear.
The slides, exhausted.
We have clapped.
Our heads nodded
like elders hearing a child
recite an oríkì
they thought lost to time.

But behold
a parrot climbs the stage,
like a cockroach chasing claps.

“Permit me to summarize…”

Summarize what, exactly?
What we just heard with our ears?
With the same mouth God gave him
for original thought?

Is he afraid
we lacked ears?
Or worse,
we came without brains?

He mounts the podium
like Moses without commandments,
rewording, repeating,
re-chewing the same yam
we’ve already excreted.

Not even generous
to add salt,
offer meat,
just stale sentences
spoken in Bad-knock tongue,
a conservative queen’s curse,
as if fake English
could bless empty thought.

We sit like unpaid extras
in a film about delay,
watching him gesture,
pause,
quote what was just quoted,
as if time,
playing too much,
forgot its mother’s errand…
as if time
now needed help
remembering.

Perhaps he thinks
we are all as draft
as himself.

He does not know
we bleed within
from this summary of nothing.

We stare,
wishing death
upon primitive protocol.

And this, my friend,
is how a nation
burns candles
to summarize darkness.

This is how we fill
files with files,
minutes with minutes,
mouths with nothing.

This is how a country’s
highest skill
is repeating
what was already repeated.

The disease of compulsive parroting!
An affection for spittle
and ceremonial nonsense.

But we know.
Oh… yes… we know—
We know the games of these talkluttons:

They talk
so we won’t ask
why nothing moves.

They summarize
so we forget
no one acts.