Tuesday Poem by Adams Adeosun

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All My Demons are on the Radio by Adams Adeosun

The roof is always burning when i come home
A bloodhound barks at the door
Until its canines crumble and its bones wither
Like the aftermath of a storm
The bodies at the dinner table
Do not smile knowing smiles
Do not sing songs of welcome
Do not ask if the stories are true
If i really walked into the cemetery down the road
And stripped my skin to show the dead
That we are kin and their kind of lost is my kind of lost
A lover wrapped her body around my body
And said pain is a poem if you transcribe it right
I looked in her eyes and saw a river
Rising into a tree house
And i knew that this home is not my home
Sometimes when I’m alone i play a song
And ask god to fold his hands over my eyes
But all of my demons are on the radio
And they are louder than Jimi Hendrix.

Tuesday Poem by Theresa Lola

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We Rebuke This Bad Death

Dami is dead.
A rope was found clinging to his neck.
We think it was a halo failed by gravity.

Is he from our tribe?
Our language has no translation for ‘suicide’.
Someone in the village must have orchestrated voodoo.

Should we drench our bodies with anointing oil
so when the spirit of death tries to enter
it will drown like Egyptians in the Red Sea.

During interrogation, his wife swears her hands are clean,
claims he had been having money issues.
She uses the word ‘depression’ and our breaths sink.

The Yoruba proverb goes “Kì í sunkún a-nìkàn-para- è”.
A man who leaves his children to inherit disgrace
does not deserve weeping.

Should he have waited till old age to die a good death?
His mother named him Oluwadamisi; God spares me.
How could he rebuke his own name?

A mother does not bury a child she raised
without feeling like she is disturbing the ground
with her failure.

Who is paying for the funeral?
Should we bury him with the rope around his neck
and hope it turns into a halo?

Tuesday Poem by Ibukun Adeeko

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Ordinary by Ibukun Adeeko

The whim of the wind in the wild
does not yield all it knows to a path.

The notes of songs linger on
the lips of floating leaves,

orchestra to the assonance of
the throttling wheel of the modern.

I am on the margin I think the light falls from
the sun. I see the woman picking

her nuts from the silent earth,
learning the time from the shadow.

Tuesday Poem by Soonest Nathaniel

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Dark Black
… for Achalugo…

In the swamp where alders grow,
the girl with invisible sun in her hair
plants follicles of hope.
Between darkness and wonder,
she charts a new course
for spirits in the material world.
She believes celestial navigation
can be taken on domestic fuels.
Far from the country,
bridges burn
and angels
are yet to mend their differences,
but the dove in her heart
sees no reason to lose sleep,
it hangs on to the moon,
gathering small twigs,
pine needles and cattails,
certain it will build a home of dreams,
for every little thing this girl does is magic.

Tuesday Poem Special by Niran Okewole

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THE SEVENTH LESSON

The river is a python dancing

 

It pirouettes, mocking the faux Jew in gaol,

Paschal lamb of King Leer,

The old sluggish king in his lair

Railing at the choice of holy writ

While the sun also rises over purgatory –

 

Ali Ghieri’s hope of redemption rests

In the thousand bosoms of Beatrice,

The many morphs of desire, dreams

Deferred like raisins in a red sun –

 

Raisins spread out to dry on the kerb,

Flung and scattered like broken

Hosts, dry fruit crunching with gravel,

Shrivelled like the wrinkles of an old hag who’s seen

Too much, too many scars turned conquest,

Their nubile innocence honed into weapons of war –

 

Look a red sun is rising over the river,

Bearing bloodtidings as this kabbalah numerologist

Fingers his beads:

This for the number of bullets littering the streets

After carnage,

This for the number of days in solitary,

This for the numbered days of Nsibidi –

 

The waves plummet on boulders

Shored up against the ruins at full tide,

The river runs its raging course –

The goddess, they say, has claimed her victims

But there is a different dialectic:

It is the season of anomie, and the death dance

Presages thunder and gore –

 

For the river

The river is a python

The river is a python dancing

Tuesday Poem by Tunji Olalere

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ABOSEDE

Then the women began to cry
under the gaunt almond tree
your things were gathered afoot
like luggage awaiting the voyager.

They talked about never seeing you again
about being left in the stealth of dawn.
How you did not count out loud
or say it was your last breaths.

But you were there, on the couch,
A hieroglyph of death’s gloating hand
hurling breath after rolling breath
over the knells of cannon-ball missives.

Then the women began to cry
Something about death being swift,
they sang about masks that chase
mortal feet on Time’s tracks.

Mothers who know the sighs
that follow a trail of blood
must now confront the silence
within the wrapper’s knotted ears.

When we got to the morgue
to the matter of iced smiles
and the alchemy of fixed grimaces,
the women began to jeer.

They laughed at death’s crooked nose
mocked his limp and lisp,
they sang about the other day
when he couldn’t rid himself of flies

And as we signed the mortician’s register
they wiped their cheeks and said,
She was the week’s guest,
let the week see her off now.

Tuesday Poem by Adebayo Lamikanra

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A Woman’s Body

A woman’s body is
Whatever you want it to be
under the scrutiny of massive thought
It expands to fill
The limit of the most fertile imagination

A woman’s body is
A temple high up in the sky
A place of solemn worship
To be approached on bended knees
With reverence bordering on awe
There to seek shelter from the storms of life

A woman’s body is
Land, rich and dark
Flowing with milk and honey
In different places at appointed times
For the nourishment of body and soul

A woman’s body is
A long winding road
Leading to the bliss of paradise
Or the tortuous undergrowth
Of perdition from where there is
No hope of rescue or joyous return

A woman’s body is
A granary packed full of wondrous seeds
Release one at a time in the ripeness of the moon
And mourned over with tears of blood
When wasted

A woman’s body is a furrow
Which when ploughed
And planted in season
Yields a gravid harvest
That brings joy and fulfilment

A woman’s body is a refuge
A snug hiding place
A secure incubator for successive
Generations waiting to be born
To take the place of those gone before

A woman’s body is a celestial courthouse
For the interpretation of natural laws
Within which justice
Impartially dispensed
Leaves no room for appeal

A woman’s body is an ocean
On which the careless
Or the unprepared sail at their own peril
It is an ocean plagued by storms
Which wreak havoc of titanic proportions
On those not blessed with favour

A woman’s body is a jungle
Slumbering in the shade of giant trees
Through which birds of fantastic plumage
Frolic with joyous abandon trilling with songs
Pleasing to the soul

It is a veritable jungle
With the occasional beast of prey
Patrolling its arboreal corridors
Seeking who to devour
A jungle fit to be lost in, irretrievably

A woman’s body is a volcano
Nestling on the highest snow clad peak
Mostly quiescent but simmering
Waiting to erupt mightily
Creating incandescent streams of lava
When provoked

A woman’s body is
Whatever you care for it to be
Given that it can expand to fill the whole wide world
Causing the earth to spin on its axis
As it rushes madly around the life giving sun.

Tuesday Poem Special by Yomi Ogunsanya

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The Strays

For the anthropologist manqué from Ijebu and his fellows

He strayed from a place of ideas,
where certain “Philosopher Kings”
speak ex cathedra

about Plato’s politics and depoliticizing
Kant’s crypto-conservative kitchen—
this careerist, now the roving ambassador

of a bald-headed plutocrat.
He found escape in the indiscipline
of a rogue discipline

straggling over boundaries and straddling
the ungovernable poles and the antipodes
of histories and narratives. He found redemption

in hollow theories and the holism
of parks and parking lots—and
in the kindness of others. Claiming

the mentorship of genuine priests—

whose accolades were earned from honest toil—
he dons the garb of a Supreme Pontiff
pontificating about loyalty and loss,

quibbling platitudes like a priest in disgrace.
He found tales in oily dreams, found doggerels
in the ditty of peddlers of violence, children

of war and witchcraft,
claiming kinship with Californian cultists, shamans
and weather-weary mystics, religious fanatics

begging a passage through alleys abandoned by others.
His kinship embraces other pretenders;
his path locking with hers—

she of the failed pastoral fame. This
weaselling Yanomamö will yet surprise us!
For behold the bumbler now boasts a Voice!

Look no further afield for his
fellow travellers, talebearers muddying
the waters, pulling centuries of wool from
their conjuror’s hat
over our eyes, over our dreams, seeking a pin
buried in the haystack of their imagination.

HOW WILL THIS DEATH BE REVEALED?

For Benson

Offerings
That cling to us teach
To give is to suffer
To share
A bitter foretaste of the death we bear

Wole Soyinka

Will my death be revealed
In sweaty drops and the drag of meaning
Less days, drawing shadows—not as
Twain’s oft-foretold death
Or Clark’s death by instalment—
In battles of daily grind?

Days taking a drag
On the butts
Of expiring cigarettes
Burning out in the hollows
Of hours closeted in that room
Designated “for fellows singing
Swan songs before the curtain fall”?

Or in the eternity of froths
And wisps of smoke, spiralling
Hugging the night, hugging
Our thoughts and laughter,
Sitting by the pool, watching
the foolery and pretences we know too well?

Will my death be revealed
In these early sprouts of winter
Taken on the chin, insufferable and blunt?
Dreams deferred take wintry exits, serially betrayed,
Presaging the hoary season
In a bearded beer cup

Foretelling the arrival of dusk.
Will my death be revealed
Like Elesin’s one decisive pull
At the cord binding our triad world
Or Olunde’s final surrender in the arms
Of that death we would have to embrace

For honour and the trophy that would
Elude our grasp?
Will I be consumed
By this ship of state
This beast crawling through
Dark waters, seeking light

In the belly of an unyielding sea? Seers
Of these dark phosphorescence preach
A penance of hope! Dark caricatures
Crawling through dingy dreams and tunnels
Taking turns to rape infants
In their sleep

Taking turns
To gorge on entrails
Left behind by their rampaging forebears.
Will our death come
While seeking foothold
In these rocky parts
Where every turn in the street

Is a minefield that we must sidestep?
Will this death come
While we sleep and others
Scheme? These cartographers of evil
Will yet hold the night in their grip
Hold our patrimony in their deranged imagination
Hold Tomorrow hostage in their lies.

Ibadan, 2017

Tuesday Poem by Logan February

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Insulin

Yes, they warned him about the sugar
rush. And no, he didn’t listen. The beehive
sounded much like any radio. Who can

blame him for following it, his calves
twitching with excitement. No one knows
how far he went, though I once raised

my face to the sky & saw a pair of eyes
staring back. They looked exactly like his.
I learned lethargy as a word, for his sake,

before I learned the feeling. Now, I need
a good glucose boost. Please. I want,
please. My last two lovers called me hungry.

So I’m looking at the sky again, asking for
manna. He did it once, he can do it again.
Hello? Hello? I suppose no one is home.

An echo against a kitchen door, floor, sink.
Spice rack. Extra-virgin olive oil. My sacrifice
is the tongue I bite to keep from crying,

mine. One thing about ancestor worship
is your father never shows up when
you need him. This way he, too, is God.

_________

Logan February is a poet and pizza-lover. He is the author of three collections of poetry. Say hello @loganfebruary

Tuesday Poem by O-Jeremiah Agbaakin

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fusion

(for Akinsanya Damilola)

does not start    with a boy     holding

his phantoms     in a polythene.

i know    what the river    thinks

of the splashes   fractured    off its skin.

at the salon    the artisan shears    us

to our skull    & a piece     of every man

falls     to the floor.

later a boy    would lumber

the hair in a sack    to a waste-truck

 

it starts   with fingers    trembling

when you hold     the broken    bone pieces

from the crash site    the way father shook

at his ribs   wrapped     in the nylon

of Eve’s     crimson chest.

i do    admit.

analogy is a weak      makeshift    here:

brittle fingernails     poking in my Bible

mother’s hair    loss trapped    in comb’s teeth,

all numbered        on God’s abacus

& lips flaked   by harmattan wind–

are not    even close    to this

i break my words      like kolanut

in a book     for you.

they are    no longer mine.

fission is the villain      here.

i know    father never cleaves    back.

boy, yet    you are    whole!

like a sickle moon     in a dark sky

boy   you are   whole!

___________

O-Jeremiah Agbaakin is a poet, editor, journalist and a lawyer in training.