Review: “Drift” by Leonell Echa

The opening is a rowdy crowd obviously protesting. It somehow reveals some themes in the poem. Tribalism, religion “we are all first human before we got religion and culture”, violence, deceit and ignorance.

The poem has a strict rhyme pattern, everything rhymes with either “write and would”. His starts with “Listen up I write” and “Giving up I fight” which are attractively contradictory. No one listens to a write up, no one gives up and fights, I can’t say what figure of speech that is. “Losing hope we try, losing hope we die, silence is the only nation ruling when we choose to hide”, this line reveals that we might die while holding on to hope, while looking on to a better future, but if we choose to be silent and keep running, the same continues to happen.

He also talks about deceit in “ruling us they lied, prisoners they tied”, and “families had cried, enemies reside”, this reveals the amount of damage done, and that the enemies are within. In the line ” our daughters are better mothers when not forcefully laid”, I feel there are two things embedded in it, first, sexual molestation of young girls and the imposition of policies that don’t fit, rob the people of one thing or the other or something they aren’t comfortable with. He talks about tribalism in ” division supersedes when we identify with tribe”, Tribe only brings about division. He concludes by saying that watching each other’s backs is the best way to survive the bad times.

The rhyme pattern makes the poem beautiful as I feel it is hard to rhyme that long. The language is very easy to relate to.

LARDO.