Take All My Wilting Roses, Lord
By Flourish Joshua Sneak the amens out of the cathedral, I wantto make love to them for my supplications. The goal, as it should be, is to outwit the wilt,smear joy on the walls of my room, necklace my laughter.…
poetry column
FOLORUNSHO EDITOR’S POETRY PRIZE 2024
Named after the late Publisher of Nigerian NewsDirect, Dr Samuel Folorunsho Ibiyemi, the Folorunsho Editor’s Poetry Prize follows in the tradition of upholding and supporting poetry in Nigeria through our Poetry Column. This prize has been bumped up to N200,000 for 2024. ELIGIBILITY…
Sun City
By Káyọ̀dé The foggy morning splitsmy lower lip, blistersthe flesh that refuses to submit to its whiteness. I slip outof the embrace of my mother’s Ankara—and no blanket warmth rivals its old snug fragrance.I am twenty rivers and hectaresof forests…
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…
CALL FOR SUBS: AFRO-FUTURISM
Poetry Column-NND, in partnership with Abuja International Poetry Festival 2024 (AIPFEST2024), is pleased to announce a call for submission of poems to be published in the Poetry Column of Nigerian NewsDirect on the theme: AFRO-FUTURISM. With globalisation and widespread technological…
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,…