The Bachelor
If the pepper seller catches him wandering in the market,
she calls out to him,
‘My pepper is ripe, Uncle, and fresh, too’,
he smiles and buys.
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| A Gentleman |
The vegetable seller not one to miss out, says,
‘You would need vegetables,
farm fresh, to make delicious stew, sir’.
The fruit seller calls, so does the fish seller, and his head becomes a chorus of womanly voices demanding attention
for what they can get from him.
He walks on and becomes the subject of their banters-
‘miserable man, greedy devil, he comes to the market by himself’.
On weekends, he would climb the lookout and he was sure to get a flash of teeth from the waitress at the eatery.
On nights, when the pots are clean and dry, there is the woman at the junction
whose fried yam, beancake, potato or fish would do just right.
The bread seller has her own nights- and on days when loneliness, that boring partner, squeezes her face too much, he runs to the lights, noise and spectacle at the shop of the beerparlour woman or stick with whatever the face of the foolish box amuses him with or keep his hand at work and his ears on the alert listening to the talkative radio.
But on cold nights that the body asks for
the warmth and salt of flesh while the affianced stands at morality gate denying a sleepover, he picks his phone to know if the equation of an ex would accommodate his why or steps into the streets where a night nurse is ready to give him medications for the tenants in his wallet.
