Want to be published? Read our submission guidelines.
Page 7 of 10
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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. ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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: ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
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 ...
Poetry Column
By Zaynab Bobi Law of invisibility: arrange the atoms in a solid object randomly. Heat at high temperature and cool down immediately. There is a realm in my mouth In my mouth, there is a dream In the dream, men are wingless canaries And water is extinct from the breast of the sea. With the ...
Poetry Column
after Samuel Adeyemi's Desist Hymn By David Solomon Mouthless god or godless mouth? my mouth opens in search of what has not deserted me: soft dust curls out like hang ropes. when i was a child, mother lapped an old bible over the white sheets that covered her cancer. she spread it so gently, as ...
Poetry Column
By Alaro Basit & yet again, like a seamster, I want to weave my past into my present. O Lord, help release a butterfly from this network of webs; I want to savor every blossoming petal in this garden & not feel a thorn in my wings. I want to lie at the precipice of ...
Poetry Column
By Onyekachi Iloh Sorry, I was in the shower. Sorry, my phone died. Sorry, I was doing the laundry. Sorry, I was at the North Pole. Penguins were sliding on the ice all around us. Sorry, old grief was at my door again, rapping at it with the urgency of someone who needs bathroom. Sorry, ...
Poetry Column
By Wendy Okekethe new year begins in the Septembers we flee again. Fireworks bleed into the sky, a nuanced rainbow.Night traffic glaze windows beyond a bridge of cars.On a purple couch, Sunday rests. A blunt. A sweet love. & ...
Poetry Column
By Hassan A. Usman There's no figurative way to say this: I'm heartbroken. It's sunset again— I arrange my body where there's a flicker, learning new ways to excite my grief. Light, even light, is damned to darkness. A bird flutters in the sky, asks why my kind of ruin is so exceptional. Say, the ...
Poetry Column
By Ayoade Olamide Joy, they say, approaches in the morning, but this one breaking from my skin holds the semblance of a comet & I don't know when it would hit. This art of liberty forms a laceration on my chest, & all I can see is a honeycomb of starlight filling the crevice with ...
Poetry Column
By Dami Ajayi (for Chebet) We let the logistics of saying goodbye overwhelm us, like young lovers. We remain tentative although we meant to be spontaneous. With ethanol & laughter & the canopy of night we feasted on music & our bodies, whispers into ossicles tickle when you contend with blooming Hi-Fis when you have ...