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,…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
By Olamilekan Wahab The flood is walking back to its shore,snail to its old shell,shame to its old self.Somehow,there are little feathers left on my body,there is a hope as raging as Santa red. I longed for flight many times…
Named after the late Publisher of Nigerian NewsDirect, Dr Samuel Folorunsho Ibiyemi, the Folorunsho Editor’s Poetry Prize follows in the tradition of upholding and supporting poetry in Nigeria through its Poetry Column. Only poets published in the Poetry Column in the year under consideration are…
By Michael Okafor I promise you this poem won’t have any laughter.I have squandered all the joy inside me. I am tiredof carrying myself. Most days I pretend to be dead.Nobody knows where this poem ends—this poemthinks it’ll end happily.…
By Flourish Joshua Sneak the amens out of the cathedral, I wantto make love to them for my supplications. The goal, as it should be, is to outwit the wilt,smear joy on the walls of my room, necklace my laughter.…
By Káyọ̀dé The foggy morning splitsmy lower lip, blistersthe flesh that refuses to submit to its whiteness. I slip outof the embrace of my mother’s Ankara—and no blanket warmth rivals its old snug fragrance.I am twenty rivers and hectaresof forests…
