Tit for Tat
Abigail-Tydale Bassey
we strangled trees
in their homes
with our hands
and while walking away,
screamed that
our heads were burning
in the sun
wasn’t the umbrella a miracle?
Flood Migrant as Historian
Abigail-Tydale Bassey
The first flood that crawled into our home
was impatient for us to pick a thing
it pulled my Mama’s begging legs
and reached high enough for me
like a hungry giraffe
slapping me across
into its mud
I was four
hopeless
scared.
Like
a boat
rowing south
it stole our hopes
and all we had saved
were fragments belonging
home or in the place we’d go
God kept my tears from drowning us
how is it easy for the universe
to be cruel to mums and kids like me?
Abigail-Tydale Bassey is a Nigerian poet of Ibibio origin. Her second chapbook Courageous is a Pengician Poetry Chapbook Prize runner up. Her first chapbook Walking with God is a Parousia Reads Christian Chapbook Series. She is an African Writers Awards in Poetry longlistee and has featured in six anthologies including Tales and Twists and The Aftermath (Tales from the Other Land, 2019 & 2022). Abigail’s poems live or will live with Writers Space Africa, Shadowplay, Poets Choice, Triune, Cultural Daily, and elsewhere. She enjoys playing tennis when she is not working or writing. On X & IG, she answers @abigailtydale.