Grocery Goddesses Poem by Tony Adah

When you talk about aesthetics
At the eight mile, it's a taboo
The goddesses of grocery perch here
On the pedestrian walkways under
Some mixture of blue, green, white, yellow umbrellas.

Wobbly old wooden tables
Dance before them and the taskforce on hawking
On Osusu spree they never pay themselves,
These women under the sun or rain
In their tattered umbrellas keep sentry over
Odara, pineapples, avocados, tomatoes
All which they sell and mess the streets,
When you talk about clearing the drains
Right behind them, they feign joy
And offer you apples with elbows
That hardly stretch forward.

When you plant the lawns and water
Them every day, because the rains are no more
They jealously sing a tune that
Government is a spendthrift
But the lush green colour of the lawns
Always is lost on them
In their perfunctory care, they shift their chairs
Forth and back
Tufts of grasses come out from the ground
Like short brooms,
One wonders if they sweep with them.

Aesthetics, when you talk about it
Even when the carnival is on
The gutters swept yesterday are full of wastes
These grocery goddesses are unbeatable
The harder you drive away, the harder they come back
They sell fruits and make hearth
Where yam, potato and plantain are fried over
For the townspeople who are their attorneys come to eat
Here where refuse brim with wastes
And a horde of flies,
Eight mile is called dirt
And dirt is called the eight mile.