Self-Portrait At Twenty
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…