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 nigerian poetry
Teaching my father how to fish
By Olatunde Osinaike Getting to know him in the interim, and the gulf of prepositions describing the relative he has been to the two younger than me. Around, against, beyond, concerning, without, notwith- standing: all of the ways we have…
Cutting ties with the cyborg
By Abdulrazaq Salihu At a lab in NASA, I sprawl my fingers On all the keys that could undo the deed Of misconception and miscalculation Like water does to dry land — revive its glory. My mistakes transpire from my…
The Forfeit of Language
By Fatihah Quadri Eniola There is no swathe that holds the slender back of hope, no truss to prehend its clavicles from break- opening. I bend the knee, seconds crash what ladders me to God. My grandma’s radio returning her…
Sleep Ghazal
By Blessing Omeiza Ojo At the IDP camp, where my kitten wouldn’t agree to sleep, I laid, missing my home, my mattress and sweet sleep. Mosquitoes wouldn’t quit the making of music in my ears. Afterward, they sucked me. It…
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…
Nightfall as a Portrait of Life
By Olalekan Daniel Kehinde Dusk floods my eyes with life, plants me in a zephyr, as nightingales parcel out songs mango leaves trip onto the dancefloor for. The shadow of a cat, cold contours run after the rats scouting for…
Anatomy of Dirge
By Osieka Osinimu Alao A chancel of songs looped in reverse is a pointer at damnation. Who keeps stealing the crucifix, cremated verses settling as ash upon a tapestry of stray tongues? At least if we are going to die,…
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…