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Assassinated Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba’s Resurrection

By Paul David Adkins
Summer 2021 | Poetry

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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