I WRITE

I WRITE

To highlight
The plight
Of the girl-child
In might
I fight
A legal battle
That strangles
Womanhood
In this wayward hood

I shout from the Kgalagadi
To implore SADC nations
United Nations
To repel concentration-camp-fashion
Global legislations
Imbued with sex discrimination

I rebuke commonwealth
On worthlessness
Of common laws
Non committal
Yet not so common
To peripheral relegation
Of the towered other
Has there ever been common ground?
Since hieroglyphic tablets
I refuse to exist in soap opera style
A piteous live tabloid

I relate the tale of a biddable child
Ripped off their mother’s warm womb
Auctioned wolfishly
To the best bidder
Deprived of letters and sums
Denied a place in the sun
Snatched off school gates
Slumped in to herding goats

Crack dew at dawn’s crack
Before frogs croak
As in the Shank
She sings the lullaby lyrics
The first of such lifetime hysterics

By /Bobana Badisang, Botswana (Published in Mahube Journal of Writers Association of Botswana 2010)