By S. Abdulwasi’h Olaitan
Lost and alone in exile, nursing your wounds.
But because the pathways carved by the land
that spat you out are nostalgic, your homeland
is a hummingbird with an artificial voice.
Her discordant melodies, on the taste buds of history,
reeked of sins. The morning you took to your father’s dusty Gángan
to strike yourself ablaze, he hand-fed you—its twelve
tension cords. But the music of your hounds howled
endlessly. Yet, the nights broke you
into scattered arithmetic of losses. But to every fallen star
on the Gángan’s surface membrane, you threaded your griefs
like music on a body of water. Hoping the green field foots
your brokenness. You sought haven in three tension cords,
but you felt its glory—too thin
so you clutched five more and struck, with a curved stick
to probe your heart’s confessions. Leaves danced in procellous
elegy, birds swallowed their beautiful tongue. But five
tension cords would never be enough: to unearth
the memories of roses maliciously torn in Jos, to cradle
the children from the hunger of devouring roads. The notes
you sought are brittle, brittle enough, to fracture
the branches away from their parents, brittle enough
to summon God’s knowledge of our artistic fallings. You
cross multiplied the tension cords with taut rope, calculated
redemption. The first, against the third, sparing strayed bullets.
The seventh, crossed against the first cord, to exile morality;
indifferent to the knife massaging a teacher’s throat,
indifferent to the children made orphans by their homeland
the eighth tension cord, together with the first and fifth cords—
whose wails would demand history, a mirror of our sins.
When you held every tension cord differently, the taut rope
howled your people’s death songs, those you could not save
with dolourous lines of poetry. Yet you struck them all together
The strap buckled, and its skin tore. The birds collapsed
from their perches one by one, their music followed.
And their cries to a mother(land) that would not behold
her children’s cries, logged me out of every ritual appeasement
logged me out of this poem
Gángan: is a Yorùbà talking drum from southwestern Nigeria.
BIO:
S. Abdulwasi’h Olaitan is a Nigerian-introverted poet, pupil of Laws, and graphics designer. He writes from Ilorin, a city he fondly describes as “a breath from heaven.” He currently serves as Managing Editor at Words-Empire Magazine. A co-winner of the 2024 Prose Purple Writing Prize (Poetry category), 2nd place winner of Wordweavers 2025 contest, Runnner up winner of Gbemisola Adeoti Poetry Prize 2026. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Bare Hill Review, Jaylit, Pictura Journal, Carolina Muse, ANMLY, Synkroniciti Magazine, Exist Otherwise, UGR, Eco Punk Literary, and others. When not writing, he enjoys tea, cherishes his parents, and listens to Billie Eilish in the dark. Find him on X (formerly Twitter).