PAULA FINN
A Man Wakes in America
Hot water ticks through the baseboards
in the downstairs bedroom of his younger brother’s house.
Traffic hisses beyond the ivory curtains.
The smell of roast lamb lingers
above the scent of coffee.
It dawns on him: his brother
has grown accustomed to this life.
He won’t tell his American wife, his sons
what his brother misses most: the cassava soaked,
spread out on mats to dry, pang
of limes that ripen in the yard, clatter
of the neighbors as they rise on cement floors,
drag their metal water pots, the odds
friends will drop by unannounced.
His brother has forgotten, it seems,
Mobutu’s ill-clad gendarmes with their M16s,
shaking down passersby.
Papa Mulenge, family friend, taken
outside the university, stuffed
inside an army jeep, gone.
And now, all over Kinshasa,
the younger children eating one day,
the older ones eating the next.