Social Scientist

Try telling three dozen African females
that God didn’t create us, we created God
he tells the staff room, and of course,
they’ve never heard of Marx, he sneers,
as he strides to his class.

Ideas, he shouts; family, state, religion,
socially constructed. We’re talking positivism,
determinism, sense-data.
He struts, half crouches and spins back
to the board, his marker slashing across it,
using it as a tabula rasa analogy of man.

He rolls his eyes when a student slides in,
his bellowing heard two departments away
as he grabs the register to demand his name.
Adam, the youth stutters.
But he needs an Acheampong, Kojali,
Abegonde or Okoti,
not a Christianised forename
of ubiquitous Catholicism.

The latecomer walks to the back of the room,
sits next to a girl with an apple on her desk.
The others look down.
Hiding their grins.