Alixa Brobbey, a 3rd-year BYU Law student, has won the MOA's 'Searching for a Home' challenge. In this social media challenge for the Maynard Dixon: Searching for a Home exhibition, we invited our followers to create a work of art of any kind that represented home for them. Brobbey's poem 'Accra' was our selected winner, and she was invited to have lunch with MOA Director Janalee Emmer to celebrate the poem. You can read her poem here.
Accra
You ask me to describe home, and you hope
I will reply with mud huts, grey elephants,
djembe drums. I hate to disappoint but
it was less lion fringe and more caterpillar
traffic, cars stacked front touching back
on the highway. The gap is thick, between
this life and that one. You don’t want
to hear about it. The socks rolled up
past my ankles to avoid mosquito bites.
The endless yellow-striped taxi rides.
The way darkness became our least
favorite neighbor, knocking at the door
in the middle of family dinner, ironing,
math exams, and school plays. The way
the fan would stutter to a gentle stop.
My hands still sting from laundry
detergent, rubbing clothes until
my knuckles were raw. I still
avoid buying milk in case the power
goes out. Trust me, some days I wish
I didn’t know the truth about home.
How the sidewalk is peppered with rust,
not gold. I miss the glow before reality
sunk in. The bright bang before we woke
to living.
