For the 112 Chibook Schoolgirls Still Missing: #Bring Back Our Girls

Those men from
the boku haram
who stole the
girls think that
when they are done
splitting them into
who they were and
the women they were
not ready to become
that those lost girls
would dance for them

They will not
raise their arms
except to imagine
peering through a scope

They will not jump
up and down
except to shake loose the pain
beaten into them

They will not twirl around
except to practice
swinging the knife
that they will steal

They will not
cry until the rock that
they hide hits it target
and blood
drenches their land

They will not dig seeds
into the soil
where the blood stains
Nothing will grow in that place
It will be sacred nonetheless

There women will gather and
the spirit of those men
will look up from
deep below and see
thousands remembering
and denouncing their crimes

They will follow the stomping
turning dipping and twisting
of the women
as they kick up dust
their limbs wild with grace
and abandon
as those captured children
now women, perform
dances of freedom

Leslie Dianne is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, playwright and performer whose work has been acclaimed internationally in places such as the Harrogate Fringe Festival in Great Britain, The International Arts Festival in Tuscany, Italy and at La Mama, ETC in New York City. Her stage plays have been produced in NYC at The American Theater of Actors, The Raw Space, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and The Lamb's Theater. Her poems have appeared or currently appear in Night Picnic Press, About Place Journal, Passaic / Völuspá, The Moon Magazine and The Lake and are forthcoming in Medusa’s Laugh Press and Hawai’i Review.