Nervous Hands
By Ugochukwu Damian Okpara here are my hands, lonely as they can be.i once asked a man to hold them & confesshis love for me. the man shy as my fatherheld them & didn’t know what else to do.i could…
contemporary african poetry
Lethargy
By Adesiyan Oluwapelumi I am sick of being okay. Term it my ingratitude. I confess, grace is the sharpest item I have ever touched. Go ahead, call me peeled skin, euphemise my sorrow. Say to my face, mercy tutors the…
Fall
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…
Metagraph of a boy against an economy of wounds
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…
The remaking to miracles
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…
lost/ if found please return
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 …
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…
A boy considering the antonyms of a miracle
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…
Drowning
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…
Lunar Bath
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…