God as a metaphor for poet
By Muiz Opeyemi Ajayi In this poem I crack open a Quran for the first time in a long while. & in my stuttering recitation I envied God for his biting eloquence. The musicality of verses. Refrains of Duha. Shamsu.…
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Contrition with Cowries & Blooms
By Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan Once again, May ends with my bare hands forgetting the gracious works they owe me; I who was forsaken to the mercy of April — a sinner who speaks nothing but apology, slivering the woodland in…
Tempest in Bódìjà, Ìbàdàn
By Flourish Joshua we woo the winds bullying brown roofs & hang them on baobabs to make gentle evenings for fables that tickle our buttocks to a dance. no one jumps into the river except the land is a knife.…
Four Haikus
By Ogedengbe Tolulope Impact Agodi garden sipping clouds from my coffee By the creeks of the Niger father’s gravestone . . . just before the sea Oduduwa’s land . . . the footprint of Oranmiyan stands high Osun river .…
Isimmiri
By Offor Emmanuel The silvery flow From atop the rocky sands Streaming, shining, like mermaid’s strands Isimmiri – harbinger of life Dwelling place for shrimps, crabs, toads, turtles, fishes Feeding the thirsty ferns and mosses The dark green trees and…
Monsoon With Òkè Ìdànrè
By Ayokunle Samuel Betiku Dulcet wind, sing of heights. We climb the long-drawn steps into rewards beyond the screaming feet, lift hands in rapture as if to pull gravity into surrender. It is the blue teeming with avian grandeur that…
August: Ecopoetry/Nature Poetry Month
Throughout the month of August, the column will be open to pieces that explore the poetics of the natural world, not distinct from civilization, but deeply impacted or quickened by it. The poems need not strictly be about climate change…
Adam
By Blessing Omeiza Ojo I found myself in the garden behind our family house and began falling in love with the god in fruits. I would have fallen for the pretty girls on the street of a city in Nigeria…
The allophone of my heart’s phoneme
By Michael Imossan —after Nome Emeka Patrick My heart gravitates towards silence like a vowel moving towards destruction. Forgive me, assimilation is the process where life assumes the features of its antonym. At the expanse of the moon, I see…
A poem is an enclave
By Divine Inyang Titus I wager, outside poems, a mother who falls into a ravine does not rebirth in a burst of angel wings. Her son does not seduce the rain with his tears or beam his glee when the…