The black orphan boy says
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…
contemporary african poetry
Onboard the chaos caravan
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…
Graffiti
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…
An offering of lamentations to the wind
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…
At the Confessional
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…
A body of water
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…
Redemption
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…
God as a metaphor for poet
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.…
Contrition with Cowries & Blooms
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…
Tempest in Bódìjà, Ìbàdàn
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.…