poetry column

Un-monochromatic day

By Joemario Umana The world is a museum, and I, a visitor as much as an artifact in it. From where I stand, / absorbing the world the way a sponge absorbswater, / the branches of the tree before me…

Enemies of Progress

By Oyindamola Shoola For two years, you’ve huffed and puffed.Yesterday, you did a negativity diet;today, your cure is a sunbath.Tomorrow, it will be a gummy bearthe Kardashians share,and next week, it will be a slimming teapromoted by an Instagram herbalist.…

(not) wanting death

By Ebuka Evans lord knows, like a child banished afresh from womb, my lips long for the flower of a lover’s nipples. lord knows i do not intend to take from another’s to fill mine but i am a hollow…

Recovering ember

By Splendor Victor In this poem, I am not withering anymore.I wake to the petrichor of soft light, and I recalllast night it rained—angel wings drizzlinglike daffodils. And see now, a garden.And butterflies dizzy with joy. God breezes by atevening.…

And my mother…

By Abdulrazaq Salihu For the people that hold me with fur My misery is a small pill,A body, punished by light& at the threshold of mySuffering my mother stretchesHer hands towards the darknessBefore it touches the flowersIn us, and my…

Quest

By Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arowolo after Notes on Ambition by Ernest Ogunyemi The soil once vegetated by luscious fernsIs now riddled with summer heat & dry stumps. Mutable music of seasons rends meThe essence of life—steadied for fruition, Seeking rudder for…