poetry column

Matchstick

By Arikewusola Abdul Awal It begins with love: the flame of misery,wanting to be let loose from a kiss— brown eagerness mistakes a landmine foran orchard and runs into a dance of explosion. Somewhere, a life reachesIts climax in flames.…

New Man

By Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe Bone-white night. Dead world. All about me, a shimmering river of silver, knife-lit lake of quiet. I have opened my eyes into an inferno of colour. Caribbean sky. Broad leaves and their lemon gaze. Of the…

Atonements

By Aliyu Umar Muhammad The poem can start with him walking backwards into a roomHe takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life— Warsan Shire Little thing,I know how deathgrows in you.I know how life…

Counting down

By Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi The whole house, like a body, fenced hot with fleshed clothes that refuse to dry.This, itself, is war, the beginning of the end,the derivation of warmth—like the feeling after a burnraged by a fire of ourselves.…

Osogbo

By Isaiah Adepoju Every evening wind-intangible,feral shadows burst open the wallsof the city like hand ploughing dead grass.The hard, inarticulate things memory-familiar, loyal to a fault— prise the city’sboughs and sunders, its Recyclable God,beat against morning & the innocence of…

Ode to the morning we met

By Bright Kingsley To say that it falls—soft yellow & white dew, blue overlays of skyon our faces. Green tides, a rushing wind &itself drenched in the glee of a fading night To say that its floorswere covered in stars,…

ode to stubbornness

By Joshua Effiong while the night was still young,i called the stars to bear witness to the distillation of my desires.& the wind to wash away the debris that remained. i’ve become too old forthe body i possess. even my…

Un-monochromatic day

By Joemario Umana The world is a museum, and I, a visitor as much as an artifact in it. From where I stand, / absorbing the world the way a sponge absorbswater, / the branches of the tree before me…

Enemies of Progress

By Oyindamola Shoola For two years, you’ve huffed and puffed.Yesterday, you did a negativity diet;today, your cure is a sunbath.Tomorrow, it will be a gummy bearthe Kardashians share,and next week, it will be a slimming teapromoted by an Instagram herbalist.…