Assassinated Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba’s Resurrection
Some Congolese believe he’ll return one day,
a couple teeth missing, perhaps, but otherwise
intact,
drafty from the bullet holes.
Other than that,
alright.
And he will.
And he has, complete
with Mephistophelean beard,
vendor T-shirts so befitting
the Father of His Country,
but they wanted him dead and,
indeed,
killed him once.
He is no Christ,
but who’s to say?
Congo in the glory
of its uprooting,
its strip-mined soul,
its blood all copper,
and diamond eyes.
His great-grandfather slew Arabs at Nyangwe,
oversaw their gleaming skulls.
He killed a lion with a spear
near Lake Kisale.
With pinched fingers, he lowered
the tender heart-strips down.
Paul David Adkins (he/him/his) earned an MFA from Washington University. In 2021, Xi Draconis will publish his collection Long Time Burning. Journal publications include Badwater, Kissing Dynamite, Spillway, and Barzakh. He has received one Best of the Net and six Pushcart nominations and the 2019 Central NY Book Award for Poetry.
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