Maze
By Aishat Yahkub I’ll let my shadows trail behind, while you holdmy untethered form in this blue darksea of stars lapping gently at usas the bored night rows our soulless bodies outto shore & back, with the drifting tidesdoes it…
poetry column nnd
A dove is a dua
By Rabi Lawal To live like a bumblebee,Is to be calm through the chaos.The world burning like the Djibouti sun.A flame for the child soaked in tomato-Red blood, mistaken for ketchup.Sleep clouds the rim of my weary mind.I love what…
Evolution
By Rachael Madakan Dandi Nighttime under the moonlight, I speak of agingbonds. It begins with lust or love. The theory ofthe unloved unfurled after a backlash. A womancalls the world to hear her out. Her voice, musicin the core of…
A Dream About My Grandfather’s Masquerade In Which It Dances From A Holographic Projection At The Museum Of The Future, Dubai
By Michael Okafor If you had watched with me,you would’ve seen it too:7-ft river of light pouringfrom behind the throat of a projector—the customary emergence of a godfrom an anthill—refracted lightpointed towards empty space. The pixelated brilliance of cowriesupholstering its…
Phoenix
By Olayioye Paul Bamidele A theory goes: the dead, like the Rose of Jericho, know a thing about regermination. Say, water bears breathing in the soil. Say the flute songs in the bones of patriots. Healing bubbles the way harmattan…
Like a comet on a horizon
By Michael Amos Imona Beneath Niger’s twilight, I roam throughveiled horizons. My lens, a witness to dusk’squiet descent; a silent pilgrimage where shadowsblur, and she—my imagined divinity—breathes. Her gaze is the night’s lust for light; an unchartedriver swollen with ache,…
Love Abecedarian
By Clement Abayomi Ache begins at the denouement of love. Today, theBleak sky mirrors the gracelessness of my ashen eyes.Coffee tomorrow is the taste of a blood-soaked bile, & myDay-long dreams yearn to liquefy like sugar in hot oil.Eyes, glittering…
Transcendence
By Emmanuel Somtochukwu FerdinandAt the door leading into Badagry Museum, I was stirred by the somberness of the black air. Every whoosh of the wind was the lamentation of the dead. All the ghosts that had travelled through past events welcomed…
Femicide runs into bodies like water
By Pacella Chukwuma- EkeThe grass has drunk more water from split veinsthan from rain. I know it is not philosophicalto begin a poem with blood. But yesterday,a sister ran into a field behind the sun, to catch a star,and drowned.…
Sincere
By I Echo “haunting fevers strangers shared in the hulls,never to break after centuries on land”— Ishion Hutchinson, ‘His Idylls at Happy Grove’ Happiness makes a clearing for meto walk through the morning light with healing. A greyed conscience.The dotted…