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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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
By Joy Mamudu The first time I saw a rake, I was a child lost in the wonder of the metal fingers that gathered leaves into heaps I could roll in later, my laughter burning like incense to the gods in the heavens above. The first time I fell into your smile was the first ...
By Odukoya Adeniyi By laying on my father’s bed, I have come to memorise the triggers of art. The body so frail, ashes chorus the last laugh. Dreams begin like a painting. In water, they form quakes, captives, canisters and other unsightly instances. Through an atlas, I touch the integration of surrender— how God kept ...
By Olumide Manuel boy in a tarmac of bruises, rigid winds with sharp tips washing off his scalp like a cinnabar of fresh amnesia. raids of fright reminiscent of the grime of the bloodflood; the residual of soiled platelets; banks of memory clot, as well as the coordinates through it? boy, you survived. remember? your ...
…Says grief is a living force making the familiar foreign By Flourish Joshua Two weeks ago, Flourish Joshua sat with Wendy Okeke, a poet and convener of Convener of Purge and Penance, a captivating poetry event that examines the duality of release and reckoning. In this interview, she touches on grief and how to communicate ...
By Olowo Qudus Opeyemi where i came from/ still smells of wet hyacinths & rotten mangoes/ that is what—the rain brings out of that place/ & i’m beginning to travel back to memories/ where grief was a mirage/ & grandma’s beige portrait was still clearer/ than the rainbows. i remember years i drooled/ on mother’s ...
By Amina Akinola i've watched leaves change colour / seasons / fading into oblivion / life wander across my eyes / like smoke / into unknown destinations initially / every part of myself had a lingering of yesterday / gushing / into streams of grief and let me tell you this: death is not the ...
By Sodïq Oyèkànmí —after reading Adedayo Agarau tonight i take a piece of paper & fill it with the names of everything lost to the rumbling river to the earth to the hands that plucked & plucked until what’s left are the crumbs ...
By Samuel A. Adeyemi Still skinny as ever. My hair, shorter, receding more. What I've learnt, though— to love myself even in my solitude, to treat the body not as a temple, but as a wound; cleansed, purified. Only a fixed body will be worshiped in, adored like Protestants before stained glass. Indeed I've learnt ...
By Shedrack Opeyemi Akanbi —for the sibling I should have carried around the neighborhood on my shoulders. You stay at the gate of this poem as chrysanthemums lining the entrance of a home. I mean you can't sit at dinner tonight, like always. I am spluttering the thick pus of bruised hope that fills my ...
By Haruna Abdulmajid there is a boy drowning next door. he has a perforated intestine & his feces, slowly leaking into his abdominal cavity. there is a boy and there are a lot of them trying to stay afloat in the water but everything is going against them including the current. imagine starting your day ...
by Mgbabor Emmanuel Chukwudalu because bathing in the moon's fluorescence is a kind of ritual — saltwater cascading my torso. forgive me, baptism is the washing away of old shadows: a cleansing of the body into a holy sacrament— a new paradox. this is how i build language on my brittle tongue like sandcastles. i ...
By Ajani Samuel Victor Everything is music. The saunter of dried leaves in a bereaved city. The crackle of creaks in a deserted home. The prana of my mother on the physician's mat. I wish to psalm my life into a vintage of amen and hosannas, to twirl my tongue and fashion a nectar of ...
By Njikonye Charles N. somewhere in the west of Africa, the sky is plummeting its blue is smeared by terror, & every evening star, running we swerve our tongues into cathedrals of prayers, for violence gushes into each second like mercury, as if to imply that what has come to be, has come to be. ...
By Damilola Omotoyinbo here, a man sail storms with a paddle carved out of his fear. a heart mourns the loss of bliss. a mind empties itself of its memories. a woman traces the map. to a home that won't spit her into a volcano. in this poem, wails only tumble back as echoes. shattered ...
By Joshua Effiong I learned the best way to live is die / with your heart kicking, like what a fetus does to its fragile home / your eyelids flickering like lightning // I have learned to fetch the stars / have them liquefied and offered to a Bartimaeus// Consider this poem a pool of ...
By Gideon Emmanuel Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. - Billy Collins childhood memories are like lanterns with a false burning The walls in my room are growing old & cold ...
By Olalekan Daniel Kehinde on the head of green hopes nested whits of weeds towering into empires; small colonies carving circumferences of warmth, bordered landmarks. son, brave beaks formed these homes with veiny bones from skeletal trees. the birds, they sheathe themselves with branched greens like an ambushed army, they circumcise the fruiting apples and ...
After Anthony Okpunor's "Confession" By Charles Nnanna there's a hole in this poem. a buried hole. each line is a seed in the quiet; cracking, desperate for daybreak: see a soul longing for a body, see a tongue toiling to find its dialect. yesterday I told some strangers to quit visiting the mirror anytime I ...
By Ehiorobo Derek My body is a wild flower that only blooms at night. When the day comes, I rise with the sun, you see, I consider myself its student. I have always been given to combustion. Once, when I was 13, I threw a fistful of termites into a flame & watched it dance ...
Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera The spoken word poetry album, “Music has Failed Us” is the debut album by the poet Abu Ibrahim who goes by the stage name, “IB.” Along with other poets from around the world, they are currently advocating that the Recording Academy create a distinct category for poetry at the Grammys. In this ...
By Abdulkareem Abdulkareem My bliss is a gun empty of bullets, teach me how to mould a body that won’t know the way to the middle of a river, how to sing a song that won’t pull my throat towards an ache, a ballad that strides towards a hiatus. My body, a choir echoing itself ...
By Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arówólò these syllables foaming in my mouth like bubbles resurrecting on the face of a lagoon are tasteless & ominous when requiems keep bursting out of me like unstoppable deluge. i filch a song from the mouth of a derelict thrush and tuck it neatly inside my larynx; doing this, maybe my ...
