The Pornography of Power
They like it on their knees,
city halls gaping, mouth full of manifestos.
Power, that meaty thing, pressed against incisors,
a hunger with no climax—cinching tighter—
craving to be crowned the fevered god.
It needs a war to straddle,
thighs wrapped around the Empire.
It needs a budget deficit to unzip and slip into.
It needs a country with its wrists hog-tied, backwards,
shuddering beneath strokes of a dictator’s wet signature.
The president arrives in silken sheets,
sighs as another law bends over for him,
smokes cigarettes on rubble of what once had a soul.
Cities burn, trembling in the aftershocks. A General moans
into his medals, fingers bullet holes like lovers’ open mouths.
Call it politics, call it conquest. Call it what it is: power
rutting in the dark, slobbering at the mouth,
already reaching for another taste.
Esiaba Okigbo is a poet, digital media strategist, broadcast journalist, and spoken word artist. His poetry collection, Teaching Father How to Impregnate Women, was selected as a winner of the RL Poetry Award. His second book, Burying the Ghost of Dead Narratives, was published in collaboration with the British Council. A Rhysling Award and Pushcart Prize nominee, Esiaba was selected in 2023 to be an International Writing Program fellow at the University of Iowa. He was also a 2021 Langston Hughes Fellow at the Palm Beach Festival and Poet Laureate for the Korea Nigeria Poetry Festival.
