“Lollipop's Conversation with a Priest”

Chidiebere Udeokechukwu, Nigeria

Creators of Justice Award 2022 | Third Prize: Poetry

Chidiebere Udeokechukwu is an Igbo Nigerian lawyer. He is a review writer for Writers Space Africa, a Non fiction reader for Carve Magazine, a poetry reader for Sepia Quarterly, a poetry editor for The Crusaders Magazine, and very recently, a poetry editor again, for Flare Journal. His poems have appeared in Irawo Poetry Anthology, Writers Space Africa Magazine, Small Leaf Press (Jaden) Magazine and Poetic Africa.

 Lollipop’s Conversation with a Priest

Lollipop:
Bless me father,
some sober secrets assail me.

Priest:
Child, May God find you and
give you good grief to remember your falls.

Lollipop:
Priest,
I bear no falls to betray but  here I am,
seeking reprieve from
a darkling cell of secrets.

Priest:
Daughter, do tell,
what darkness ails your heart?

Lollipop:
Priest,
I am priestess, much like you
but of lasciviousness.
When the night descends his veil,
I prowl from street to street, alleys
to nooks and slums.

Priest:
Child, do tell,
what drives you through the dark?

Lollipop:
Priest,
It's good you care to ask.
I roam the night,
bending before lust-driven sons,

bickering and battering at desire's call.

Priest:
Ah! I see
Child, your will is brave,
Your deeds are bold.

Lollipop:
Father,
I am shaman, much like you,
in the red light regions.
Men, useless lot of them

are bland on my bewitching tongue
and I exhale them like smoke
incense offered to my unyielding heart.

Father,
a mad anguish ails me.

Priest:
Dear child, do tell,
my ears befriend your tale.

Lollipop:
Different standards of
white washed hypocrisy measure
sex, and brand me a long-lost cause.
Men, useless lot of them
who know nothing of cost,
or shame or suffering,
they love me in the dark
and loathe me in the day.

Father,
I do not bear tomorrow in mind,
tomorrow is ages apart.
I am dirty and castaway,
men, useless lot of  them,
this is how they think.

Men, useless lot of them,
They come to me,
time and time again!

I am anon,
men love me good this way.
What is my 24th false name again?
dolly, baby, cutie,
cherry tart, Virginia,—whatever!

I am foul and nothing but
an ashtray, a mouth, vagina,
an anus. Who needs me bad when
others are for cheaper chits?

Day by day I die by
the hands of men, useless lot of them
who pay for smooth or
forced pilgrimages into my cathedral.
And they are extolled.
Another holy kill.
Society minus one piece of useless filth.

Priest:
O child, do tell, 
what name by birth you bear?

Lollipop:
Priest, O Priest,
I do not know my name.