Ghanaian poet and writer whose work delves into themes of the body, the politics of language, spirituality, and faith at the intersection of living.
She is a 2025 Black Atlantic Residency Fellow, the 2024 Second Runner-Up and the 2025 First Runner-Up of the Adınkra Poetry Prize. She is also a recipient of the 2025 DUAPA Mentorship Program. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in The Kalahari Review, Akpata Magazine, Akowdee Magazine and others.
AFE – Ancestors Answer Me
They named me Aƒe
The first time I was told not to speak Ewe,
a chalk snapped in the teacher’s hand,
said, “Speak properly,”
and shame nestled in my throat like glass.
I did not know then,
that language could rot inside a body,
that forgetting was a kind of hunger
Medzia ha le ɣlidodo me
I sing in whispers
na tsi naɖo ŋku edzi
/letting water remember /
Nusi anyigba si dze agbagba be yeabu
what land tried to lose.
But I have lost salt that sat once like prayer
in the mouth of elders,
now mispronounced, trimmed to fit a
classroom roll call.
Tɔgbuiwo, do you hear me?
Were you loved? Were you lonely?
Did anyone ever hold your hand?
Were you swallowed by oceans of silence?
I wake with river water in my lungs,
but no one believes I am drowning.
There is too much blood, and it reeks of forgetting.
When I offer you libation, do you drink,
or do my prayers vanish into your thirst?
What do I do with this rage?
this ache braided into my spine,
Is it yours, is it mine?
I carry this forgetting like an inheritance.
tongue curling like smoke-unsure,
calling through blood, calling through bone
body trembling like a hymn
Tɔgbuiwo, lead me home
to that ancestral light,
where even silence is a kind of response.
