By Timi Sanni

I arrived at this world already primed for pain—
the hurt, persistent, primal, poised.

Born on the rubble in the wake of the war,
I was no different from that child
birthed in the aftermath of the world’s worst divorce.

The world knew nothing of my birthing,
but everything about the conjugal knife
which came before and thus was senior.

So I learned quickly to tiptoe
around origin and place, fearful
of what mines a misstep might make.

I learned to shut my ears to the music of pain
so that what came opening in blooms
were the red valves of my heart.

But today, my father is dying
beneath this broken bridge
and all those lessons become lesions
whipping me into a wound.

My father speaks
of the towers
in the voice of his wife—
that woman who fled long ago
from cot to comfort.
In the distance, the tall metal ghosts do nothing
but remind me how far we fell from grace.

My father says: once, there was a republic;
no towers, no undercity. He says once,
love was a spirit that walked amongst us
in garbs too green to grab. He says—

And then, I am telling him to stop.
I am lying to him
like I always have. It’s okay, Pa, I say.
It’s okay. Though there is nothing of such
in this place of rust.

What even is okay? Death happens
to memory, and like a fool, I forget
the meaning of words.

My father, dying now at my breast like a child.
What milk do I have to give?

.

.

BIO:
Timi Sanni is a writer, editor, and multidisciplinary artist from Lagos, Nigeria. He is the founder of The Muslim Write Initiative and a member of The Deadliners.

The recipient of the 2021 Anita McAndrews Poetry Contest Award and winner of the 2022 Kreative Diadem Contest, his works appear or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, New Delta Review, Cincinnati Review, Lolwe, Wax Nine, and elsewhere.

He is an alumnus of Nairobi Writing Academy, and was an attendee at the Revolutionary Poetics Masterclass with Kaveh Akbar.

In response to Billy Collins’ ‘The First Night’

By Chisom Okafor

I am holding unto the past like a monochrome photograph
to my chest, listening to your heart
beat against mine in this untouched dark 
You say something about the past
not holding water anymore,
a forecast of hands, yours,
held against the darkness.

Let them go, you say.

The secret to understanding Einstein’s thoughts on relativity
is not far away from us, you say.

There is an orchard of hearts where ours orbit each other,
against the giant star of death,
and are helmed in by a curvature in space-time,
never falling completely into it,
but never drifting away, too
in an ever-evolving ring of grief.

You read me Jiménez in the fading light,
straining with each stroke of dusk, to catch the printed words
above an insurgency of cataracts, already overtaking
the city of your eyes.
The hardest thing about death,
must be the first night,
you read.

And Billy Collins:
you have me wondering
if there will also be a sun and a moon

and will the dead gather to watch them rise and set.

In a parallel universe, when we have tired the sun
with our talking, 
and having sent her down the sky,
I see you walk to the gramophone 
to play my favorite record — 
a gift of dirges from a father to his departing son.
You invite me to a dance,
but my limbs, cachetic tonight, collapse just before 
our rhythmic ritual begins.

BIO: 

Chisom Okafor, Nigerian poet, editor and clinical nutritionist, has received nominations for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize and twice for the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, the Gerald Kraak Prize, the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Account, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, A Long House, Salt Hill Journal, Isele Magazine, FIYAH, North Dakota Review and elsewhere He has also received support from the Commonwealth Foundation and presently works as chapbook editor for Libretto Magazine. He tweets @chisomokafor16.

By Tope A Larayetan

K’ene onye keni ye n’uwa
is how the weekend calls us in —
how the neighbors tell us
Mommy would show up cradling
brooms, packers, and mops.
Her fingers buried in a plastic bowl
of water waiting to wreak
droplets on our exposed skin.

Akanchawa
is how Port Harcourt awakes
from slumber: bright buckets climb
on top of townspeople’s heads
as they flow toward a borehole,
eager for the latest gists: couples’
fights that evaporated through walls,
thieves that were finally caught.

Kunie na ibu dike
is how beans become paste between
the jaws of grinding machines
become balls of akara in scalding oil
slow motion gargles of cooking pap
to the shuffle of exhausted feet
packing the last of the dirt, managing
what is left of the weekend.

BIO:
Tope A Larayetan is a Nigerian poet and writer. She is the 2023 winner of Old Dominion University’s Graduate College Poetry Prize sponsored by the Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Society of Virginia. Her works have appeared in Agbowo, The Shallow Tales Review, Kalahari Review, and the maiden edition of the International Sisi Eko anthology. She serves as the Poetry Editor of Barely South Review.