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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 ...
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 ...
By Muiz Opeyemi Ajayi In this poem I crack open a Quran for the first time in a long while. & in my stuttering recitation I envied God for his biting eloquence. The musicality of verses. Refrains of Duha. Shamsu. Ar-rahman resounding its anaphora into Fabi ayi Allahi rabbikumo tukazziban. At the moderasat, we perfect ...
By Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan Once again, May ends with my bare hands forgetting the gracious works they owe me; I who was forsaken to the mercy of April - a sinner who speaks nothing but apology, slivering the woodland in guilt- to be lost in a forest is to be so close to evergreen; a ...
By Flourish Joshua we woo the winds bullying brown roofs & hang them on baobabs to make gentle evenings for fables that tickle our buttocks to a dance. no one jumps into the river except the land is a knife. no one looks the sun in the face except it rains misery. home holds the ...
By Ogedengbe Tolulope Impact Agodi garden sipping clouds from my coffee By the creeks of the Niger father's gravestone . . . just before the sea Oduduwa's land . . . the footprint of Oranmiyan stands high Osun river . . . the goddess's teeth on white bricks BIO: Ogedengbe Tolulope Impact is a multiple ...
By Offor Emmanuel The silvery flow From atop the rocky sands Streaming, shining, like mermaid's strands Isimmiri – harbinger of life Dwelling place for shrimps, crabs, toads, turtles, fishes Feeding the thirsty ferns and mosses The dark green trees and shrubs, waving in admiration The passageway to Isimmiri – like the mouth of the cave ...
By Ayokunle Samuel Betiku Dulcet wind, sing of heights. We climb the long-drawn steps into rewards beyond the screaming feet, lift hands in rapture as if to pull gravity into surrender. It is the blue teeming with avian grandeur that calls before the resplendent interspersions of rusty roofs down below. The surrounding wood land, verdant ...
By Blessing Omeiza Ojo I found myself in the garden behind our family house and began falling in love with the god in fruits. I would have fallen for the pretty girls on the street of a city in Nigeria or Singapore. Thinking of my loss, I had burnt a pot of stew and my ...
By Michael Imossan —after Nome Emeka Patrick My heart gravitates towards silence like a vowel moving towards destruction. Forgive me, assimilation is the process where life assumes the features of its antonym. At the expanse of the moon, I see a child's face, a calabash, a vulture, the breath of a roving tiger — but ...
By Divine Inyang Titus I wager, outside poems, a mother who falls into a ravine does not rebirth in a burst of angel wings. Her son does not seduce the rain with his tears or beam his glee when the thunder barks home his mother’s laughter. Ashes do not retain that beauty of dark metaphors. ...
By Nnadi Samuel glossy with aging, in that green conceited morning. rot terrifies me. fossil, barreling through my measured loin. I conserve light at the slightest crack of dawn, from things that pass for broken: my delicate mother. the thunderstick upshot high, where greening kites in rebellion. where if we must be virtuous; it must ...
By Shitta Faruq Adémólá Today, I awoke on God's lap. Tomorrow will be the festival of flying and yes, I will fly into the wind. Tell your mother I have just received a scar on my left ear- I am now permitted to morph into miracles. Tell her my tongue has lost the taste of ...
By Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí —my imagination can’t weave it up, language lays cold in my hand, a petalled pistol. nine years, seven months & twenty-four days of being motherless makes you unable to dream a world where you are somebody’s favourite song, their light, the flower buried in the chest of golden morn. I am ...
By Rahma O. Jimoh i hold this place with all of its blue waters, dazzling sunlight, tulips & bougainvillea— i transcend into water, curl around fleets of flowers. like a creek, unafraid, i pour into others & the sea mirrors the sky's vastness. beyond the shores, i see people being people; not a single white, black, yoruba, ...
By Georgie Your mother sprawls Like a petition left unanswered At an altar. You calculate if this pregnancy Outweighs her body— you imagine How it must be to lift something inside Other than yourself. You shake her fragile body Just enough to avoid a split As though it were your grandmother You tried waking back ...
By Chinedu Gospel For Mariam every time / my name escapes / from your windpipe / it’s as if I’ve been drowning / inside your air sacs / all my life / & you’ve been pushing me out / like carbon dioxide / how the clouds shove / the rain unto the earth / & ...
By Anthony Okpunor I think memories to keep the body. I write about the day as what endures the night. something about dreaming is a lie— the blue line above your head is a puzzle of not remembering. still, sometimes, the things I want out of this life are small; like a boat, made from ...
By Abu Bakr Sadiq I wake drunk on the smell of my kufi liquefying under sunlight I touch the sea under my eyes hoping to pick wishbones from its bed I watch a cat fight for its life as it gulps mouthfuls of mudwater in a pond & I do not know if I want ...
By Taiwo Hassan in this poem, fire wears the essence of its irony and i'm drowning. touch this skin, there's a home burning in each of its pores. make no mistake, these ashes are not meant to be unburnt, so let your hands wander carefully, there are no chances for healing in this land. today, ...
By Emmanuel Ojeikhodion an armistice fails to reconcile the war-zones of my body. there is a big war within that doesn't die. no one watches when I split like a burning house. nobody listens to the grief rattling my bones. even God sometimes goes into a deep slumber when I break. the suburb of my ...
