Karatina Market
BY MIGWI MWANGI
He wears his mother’s eyes each market day.
She appraises the papayas, green oranges
rounding his thumb and forefinger. Go to
the mud-wet pumpkin leaves at that stall.
Look—dirt or blight? He carries palmfuls of
iron beans to eyes that found fastest
where the roof leaked, keen for more than
glimpses of The Bold & The Beautiful.
She watches as he knocks, asides the unripe
melons. Baskets the least scabrous
tamarind. Jute, amaranth, bitterleaf.
A breeze dusts the market. He closes
her eyes, private as a photo behind a
photograph. He harrows his tongue to
haggle. A crackle grasps his throat as when,
one morning, (cold light or fog?),
watching the millet vendor, flour raining
through a sieve quick & gone—
a remembered face parts the veil of one life to
stand among the butchered meats.
Each market has their own ghostroots.
In this one, holding tight his other hand,
he may coax his dead lightward. He stows
his bargains. The root-slashed cane,
a crop of red plums—everything ripens.
The wind that sheafs the reed is born
of the wind that bends the oak.
