THE WOMAN WHO MARRIED MY HUSBAND
Woman,
I drink this poison
To your honor,
I drink it
Till God cries,
Then you'll hear
Your sound too,
When I am done
Weaving your flywhisks.
Woman,
Come crawling on your goat-knees here,
Here before me,
Come crawling
Like a dog that has farted!
O my clansmen,
I returned to you!
Speak to my new husband,
Speak to Lukwiya — your brother!
He is dead,
Dead alive!
A walking coffin — you see;
He is dead and buried
In advance,
This shell of a man
You call my husband
Is a walking silhouette!
A millet chaff
Merely blown away
By a weak-waisted wind,
Like a loose light feather,
This bone without flesh
You scornfully call my husband
Is a walking skeleton!
O my clansmen,
I am tired
Of this man who the wife married.
By the truth of my mother spread naked
Upside down,
If I am telling a lie,
May lightening strike me dead,
I tell you the truth,
O my clansmen,
Alcohol has married my new husband already,
And he tells me
That if he is to refuse alcohol,
He would rather die!
That he will never refuse alcohol
Till dogs refuse bones,
That if he is to hate alcohol
And love me,
He would rather lie
With his grandmother!
My clansmen,
My husband is an arrogant monkey;
He is a log of wood
Women have left
As brewers leave dregs.
He is a barking African dog,
His hands are like the hand of the borehole,
He is a poisonous snake
Whose poisonous fangs
Have been removed by new lifestyle,
Except that he bites a poor woman
Like I am.
My clansmen,
I am my new husband sister!
Lukwiya sleeps and turned his back on me;
My clansmen,
My husband's body needs a repair
With a black goat,
A white chicken,
Saltless sneezed peas
And a sheep-dung...
Drumsticks have to roll
Upon the baby drums
And hard palms have to strike the mother drums,
And the Wise One begins
Wer Jok
For the chorus women and men
To chant upon my husband
To dance naked
Before the Great Clan Oracle;
Or to let him sit
Amidst a marching troop of black ants —
Why?
Because his axe has fallen into water.
Why does my new husband curls
Like a well-satisfied python,
And turns his back on me,
And snores and fart till dawn?
Am I a wall-portrait?
Does my mortar hates its pistil?
O my clansmen,
Speak to my new husband,
Lukwiya needs your talking to,
He does hear my words,
He is a bull that has broken loose from the kraal,
A bull that has broken its ox-log;
Alcohol has married him already.
His gourd of strange concentrated beer
Remains in between his twigs of legs,
He drinks to finish
But not to enjoy
Like the husbands of other women do,
He drinks
And turns his bottle upside down
Till the last drop drops into his filthy mouth.
My husband leans his head on drinks —
The children are my eyewitnesses,
Sachets are his sole pillows,
The bottle is his favorite wife,
Alcohol is his pure blood,
The alcoholic blood,
My kinsmen —
His best friend the brewer!
In the dark dawn,
My neighbors hear my sound
Over refusing
To offer him my ancestral food;
At the midday sun,
They enjoy my sniffling sound
Over cooking silver fish...
At the midday moon,
They lie awake
Hearing my shrilly sound
Over arm-twisting
For cooking him logs of wood
And tasteless water,
For which he leaves money.
By that dawn,
He rises up
And washes his face
With bottled beers,
And rinses his mouth,
With the beer dregs,
He changes diets
With more Ugandan Waragi;
His body is color is changed
From dark blue
To blood red,
You may think
He is a pregnant woman —
Brown like burnt bricks.
My husband's stomach
Is a pot of all beers;
He drinks this,
And drinks that;
From "Wounded Head"
To "Kill Me Quick"!
From "Red Scovia"
To the "You Remain Alone Gin"!
From "I Hate Women"
To "In Women I Trust"!
From the "Mad Lion Gin,
To the "Devil's Tears Waragi"
Arege,
V.J Gin,
Except Malrwa...kwete...
My new husband is shapeless,
His cheeks resemble
The cheeks of an anthill,
Like cheeks of edible rats,
His eyes are ripe red peppers,
Glowing like black coal of red embers
In the blacksmith's furnace;
His stomach is bag of exotic dregs,
A kwashiorkor of an all-year-round famine.
My husband hates my home foods
When I skillfully cook,
He says my foods are rubbish,
He cannot collect rubbish
In his power hungry stomach;
He says he doesn't eat rubbish
That I cook.
When I insist,
He says I have put poison
In the food
For which I insist;
And he says if I insist
For long
I will see what the monkey saw in pea-garden;
That I will regret...
That instance broke the mother drum,
I know, my kinsmen;
I know it
Like a fool knows the back of his own hands...
He contemptuously pushes the food
With his foot,
And appreciates you
With insults...
Husband! Husband!
Who can find a good husband,
One without a mustache?
Husband! Husband!
Who can find a good husband,
One with a woman's chin?
Maybe if he were a god,
Someone would!
One who doesn't brush off
His forested mustache
Against your variegated lipsticks.
My husband eats
As though my foods were bitter,
He eats like a woman
Who is newly married?
He picks the foods
With his right thumb
And his second finger,
And eats like a gnawing rodent
Eating sunflower seeds,
Like he is lazy.
Then he ridicules me
And says
His mother cooks better than me.
That my foods
Upset his stomach,
That they make him want to vomit
His intestines out —
Because I cook rubbish.
He leaves the food
On the floor,
And rushes for the Party's meetings
In the Republican Bar
And Lodges...
My heart doesn't fall or pound,
For I know
I am a true Acoli woman,
Not an enhanced photoshop portrait
Of a black woman,
With a moon face
And pit's bed thighs!
My hairs are elephant grasses
And dark like coal,
I comb them
And they erect
Like a healthy man;
They curl up
Like creepers that choke a tree to death.
I don't glory in borrowed things,
I am jealous
Like the Moses' God;
My hands don't get worn,
And my knees are black
From over bending
In the garden,
Weeding!
But my new husband is not;
He likes borrowed things,
And he shouts praise-names
Of his brother's bulls.
Doesn't he know —
Borrow-borrow never lasts?
And that —
A borrowed saucepan
Does no
© Kiplangat Onesmus yegon