Beginings

As a recent college graduate with an English degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I decided to share some of my creations from the past four years rather than let them collect dust in the bowels of my computer hard-drive. My posts will be eclectic, like me, ranging from essays and poems to photographs and recollections of my travels.  Thank you for reading. Please feel free to provide any feedback and pass the blog on to anyone who might be interested.

peace,
Moe

Manomenima

A child clings to his mother’s breast,

Rice and palm oil smeared on his chubby face,

Ribs visible through boated stomach.

A dog, teets dragging in dust and rock,

Nurses its pups, providing nourishment

As nearby children play in the court barrie

With sticks, pebbles, and broken machetes.

The blacksmith’s muscular arms hammer out rusted railroad tracks,

His bloodshot, jaundiced eyes squinting,

Dust covered face streaked from beads of sweat,

While sweet, rolling notes of Arabic

Emanate from the mosque,

Now being invaded by an impenetrable army of moss,

And a burned out Liberian tank sits,

Rusting at the entrance to Manomenima. 

This poem serves as a tribute to the Sierra Leonean village where I lived during the summer of 2010. Through this poem I attempted to capture the beauty and poverty of Manomenima. While it was a gorgeous setting surrounded by thick walls of jungle, there were also diseased children, reminders from the civil war such as a burned out Liberian tank a few miles away, blind and disabled women and men begging us for help, etc. In many ways it was like a yin-yang with beauty and tragedy co-existing.   

* The UNC on-campus magazine Carolina Passport recently published this poem in their Spring 2012 issue.