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By Goodnews Karibo again I come to the place where I am inept at upending my fears. to sort each quaking bone for its smouldering nerves. before I take my body out into the open fields. before I listen closely for the origin of my grieving. before I put a finger to the heart of ...
By Tope A Larayetan K’ene onye keni ye n’uwais how the weekend calls us in —how the neighbors tell usMommy would show up cradlingbrooms, packers, and mops.Her fingers buried in a plastic bowlof water waiting to wreakdroplets on our exposed skin. Akanchawais how Port Harcourt awakesfrom slumber: bright buckets climbon top of townspeople’s headsas they ...
By Ajibola Tolase In the doctor’s office wheremy symptoms dissipate at the newsof negative test results. I’m lookingat my tongue, colored orangeby Fanta in the mirror. Sinceit seemed I will live I shiftmy focus to things dying in me—English words I learnedin a different country whenI was five. Orange, I learnedwas a citrus before it’s ...
By Ugochukwu Damian Okpara here are my hands, lonely as they can be.i once asked a man to hold them & confesshis love for me. the man shy as my fatherheld them & didn’t know what else to do.i could mistake him for my father standingface-to-face with me, not smiling. once,he called to me in ...
By I.S. Jones I loved you when I was a childand so, my love for you was childish.For nine lifetimes, you’ve haunted my dreams. Nine lifetimes of finding me in the tender hoursthat hang low enough to touch.Which doesn’t help ease me to sleep. You marked in memory: lips—overwroughtof sweetness, mouth like a too worn,kicked-in ...
by tosin gbogi what does the sea bring back to me now what does it wash ashore in its nude song of crossing and what floats on its frothing face, butterflying with the tide . . . the light of the lighthouse is now gone and only the white of water casts its shadow on ...
By Animashaun Ameen R said my deepest flaw is wanting to save everything and, in reply, I let myself break down and asked him to save me. He didn’t. The whole world is on fire so this is the wrong time for me to say I miss my hands. R doesn’t know this. Nobody knows ...
By Olatunde Osinaike Getting to know him in the interim, and the gulf of prepositions describing the relative he has been to the two younger than me. Around, against, beyond, concerning, without, notwith- standing: all of the ways we have known him before. Rekindling affiliations the same as dreams to the minors we were. So ...
By Flourish Joshua Faith Moyosore Agboola's poetry has a raw, sensitive, and honest quality to it. There's something remarkable about the way she writes lines that tell strong and moving stories while also being interwoven with multiple poetic devices. During poetry performances, she has an eerie and spellbinding way of delivering her lines. It has ...
By Inimfon Inyang-Kpanantia the truest poems start with forgiveness for the things I could have become — more when I needed to be vulnerable so I wouldn't grow into stone. so you see there is no more flexibility in here, no brassbound band of muscle open to giving in. bye, body. my last batch of ...
By Blessing Omeiza Ojo At the IDP camp, where my kitten wouldn’t agree to sleep, I laid, missing my home, my mattress and sweet sleep. Mosquitoes wouldn’t quit the making of music in my ears. Afterward, they sucked me. It flew away; my sleep. Yet, they chased me everywhere, even outside the tent. What’s the ...
By Emmanuel Obadara and paint over them / with the brightest colours / known to man / but the pain will always be there — r.h. Sin fading into the ether like sea foam the wind weaves a thread of light from the rowing sap. cut sharp & urgent like an unwinding of a prayer. ...
By Emmanuel Mgbabor you pull each nylon wing as you would unhinge a star from the sky's dress. & for the first time, you watch a thing discolour in your palm. & i love you for this bravery, for the soft animal grazing beside your heart. i remember the night we swam the field of ...
The NIGERIAN NEWSDIRECT CHAPBOOK AWARDS is an initiative of Poetry Column-NND that seeks to promote the voices of Nigerian poets, as the column does weekly in our newspaper. We hope to prioritize consistency of the award, and in so doing, document the vibrant work being put out by contemporary Nigerian poets. The WINNERS of the NIGERIAN NEWSDIRECT CHAPBOOK AWARDS 2022 ...
By Muhammed Olowonjoyin in the end, we’re all constructs of things that couldn’t kill us. and what we are left with when their knives fail are fears to pillage our chests on days when we watch the disasters our dreams and longings are tiptoeing into. everything a man tries to save cannot be saved for ...
By Adesiyan Oluwapelumi I am sick of being okay. Term it my ingratitude. I confess, grace is the sharpest item I have ever touched. Go ahead, call me peeled skin, euphemise my sorrow. Say to my face, mercy tutors the sturdiest build. Laugh at my wretchedness, call it a cosplay & reprimand me for a ...
By Olalekan Daniel Kehinde Dusk floods my eyes with life, plants me in a zephyr, as nightingales parcel out songs mango leaves trip onto the dancefloor for. The shadow of a cat, cold contours run after the rats scouting for food in a home, and dogs wag, welcome their owners home. Now, nightfall is here: ...
By Adamu Yahuza Abdullahi I don't know how not to nurture silence. Every time I write, I am reminded that my country is a broken branch of an olive tree that hangs in the ruin of the wind. Today, the river I nurse inside is swallowing me, I am fading from permanence. Before I begin ...
By Chinecherem Enujioke On this beach, there is no one. The footprints say too much. About the past. Things that remain unsaid but heard. Voices reaching to join the hallelujah from the church atop the hill. I raise the sand and feel the wind snatch them. A stone after another. I touch the trees and ...
By Osieka Osinimu Alao A chancel of songs looped in reverse is a pointer at damnation. Who keeps stealing the crucifix, cremated verses settling as ash upon a tapestry of stray tongues? At least if we are going to die, let’s be consoled by the possibility of a resurrection. Only that time may be a ...
By Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale (For Shabina Feisal) Take this tawdry dunya by the edge, like the frail wings of a moth, with the tips of your fingers. Take life as a staged melodrama full of cameos, seasons of plots and tons of twists. Take every step as if pacing the palms of a slippery road ...
By Okoronkwo Chisom My grandfather told my father that he could be anything he wanted, so he chiseled his body to look like rain. He fell in droplets into a tank of an abstract noun — a name that lacks ownership. In a dream I learned the chemistry of forgetting, I tried to hold the ...
By Saheed Sunday there are different voices at the centre of what holds láfeńwá up. the first time we held our heads over the demarcation between this home and the rest of the city, we witnessed faith crawling into versions god might have skipped their details: cracks in the voice of the boy who covers ...
By Bayo Aderoju Something about wanting to be the head of a headless mob like the young activist who has never read Jeyifo, who said: Frantz Fanon is a wretched name. Some are preaching positive asphyxiation of some of the times that crooked this time, but dead will still mean dead when my father’s name ...
By Prosper C. Ìféányí Listen. The flowers weren't once devastating in their beauty. No logic came from burning rosebushes; & somewhere, in the field, the birds are eating a man's shame. I am drinking black coffee & walking barefooted in winter; I am a pane of glass shattered like china in the sun, & the ...
