PRAYER
by Ayokunle Falomo


​          for Erica Garner & Breonna Taylor &
          Oluwatoyin Salau & the Chibok girls & & &

what in this country Lord this country of soot
where breath is easily snuffed out of a body
Lord what is this country this country that

is not my father’s Lord what in this country
can a father promise his daughter but smoke
Lord my sister Ebony says no one turns over

the earth when a black girl goes missing Lord
when a black girl goes she goes like smoke and
no one turns when a black girl goes when she

goes missing Lord she goes and Lord I’ve been
and not been no one Lord I have no tools with
which to turn the earth except my pen which is

a useless shovel Lord the very ground I rest my
body on is asphalt Lord and in my sleep I turn
and back in my mother’s country there’s a chorus

of mothers still singing to no one bring back our
girls goes the refrain of the song bring back our
girls they sing they sing bring back our girls and

I being no one join the chorus and I sing and sing
bring back our girls with the wings on their backs
intact with words I string them back to the backs

their mothers backed them with I sing them back
into their mothers arms I sing them wings I sing
them and sing them back and Lord I bring them



Note: “No one turns over the earth when a black girl goes missing” is from Ebony Stewart’s White Men Say Weird Things To Me.
Ayokunle Falomo is Nigerian, American, and the author of AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022), two self-published collections and African, American which was selected by Selah Saterstrom as the winner of New Delta Review’s annual chapbook contest in 2019. A recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and MacDowell, his work has been anthologized and published in print and online, including The New York Times, Houston Public Media, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Texas Review, New England Review, Write About Now among others. He is currently a Zell Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where he obtained his MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry.