Tuesday Poem by Peter Akinlabi

/in

A Failure of Speech

A surfeit of light throws
Dark images onto the walls–

An unfamiliar thing stretches
In a glut of obstacles
Between our two shadows

On the radio, a song calls nobody’s attention
To the silent way of ruins–

When we fail at speech words become
Mined or maimed–

Our shadows rise onto each other in bad cheers
Disregarding the place of air in language

We imagine happiness and our bodies adopt
The shape of its distance–

Nothing more resembles the sounds
Of crumbling walls than the plosions
Of water tumbling by, you once said

Now I imagine the solitude of objects
Caught in a flood–

And memory is the intense eye trailing
Detritus with a bespoke impairment

Tuesday Poem by Adetoun Samiat

/in

Worship
(for Olamide’s lover)

Your body is my religion:
god is your neck,
god between your thighs,
spirit in your arteries.

Let me kneel and moan
praises to your limpness,
till you rise to my aid a third time.

Let me give myself to you,
a sacrifice of the self,
burning from within,
molten lust pouring down
two devout mounds
on my chest.

Let me grab your holy of holies,
or grab the tip of your holy of holies,
till the spirit begs the tip of my tongue:
go forth and spread the gospel.

Tuesday Poem by Saddiq Dzukogi

/in

A Poem with a Line from Carl Phillips

My body folds into a small
space, the mouth of a python
stretched for the swallow.

Solitude engorges the sound of heartbeats,
fulminating against the walls of my skull,
the curls of my hair.

They could let the nights unfurl
before them, splayed as figures
ingesting my fingers, soft as feathered steps,

the quicksand eats everything,
my shadow, whose skin is a skin
of an adversary welcomes the sun’s

multitude tongues, careened on leaves,
spilled on bodies, mixed
where the crescent stares across the horizon.

I don’t see anyone but shadows
drowning next to a mountain
on liquid earth, slipping through a pelvic floor,

deep into the mouth of the python,
the snake with two heads,
the snake consumes its own tail.

Tuesday Poem by Adebiyi Olusolape

/in

Why I Write

I

See

See the toddler sitting

Upright in an opening on the forest floor

Comfortable in the fat of his body and in his tunic of musical colours

Eyes in the big ball of a head

Squint to touch like convex legs of a callipers itch to touch

Govern immense industry

In two active arms

Over the vast dock of space between two bow legs

 

II

The fountain pen

Of the fat nib

Squats like a hound between the hunter’s feet

His is the odd-leg callipers

Because he limps

the one is not as long as the other

the road is not as long as the river

this piece of earth, not as long as that patch of sky

the thumb, not as long as the index finger

But who gave it the child, this outsized dog with the lonely flap of a single ear?

III

That dark tool of the nominal hunt

Sits ensconced between the thumb and the prestidigitator’s beckoner

The opposable stub and the prestidigitator’s forefinger

Dragged across the white page of the wide riverbank in the sidewise wag of the river crab

IV

It fits before it slips to the forest floor

Cocks his elbow and presents the pen-arm to himself

For inspection

In that instant he smiles, amused

Before it slips to the forest floor.

 

Tuesday Poem by Roland Nduka Akpe

/in

What a Lichen

Like lichen I likened what you meant to me
to commensal affections
Passive symbiosis of resigned companions
who could live without each other
but would rather not

The cardinal rule in what we had
was an insistent middle finger
given to everything, anyone
who sought to teach us
that this utter reliance on the other
was toxic
We suspect it is
Do not confirm our fears
Do not speak it in spray of spittle
spritzing out your wise wise mouth,
fucker
Here’s a middle finger for your trouble –
Up yours.
Up north.

Yes
We are ended now
and this is what I liken it to:
The convenient end to Double Indemnity – a dark screen
and words;
A sack letter
plastered in words coated in more
words not meant, peppered in pretence of mint;
It is the beginning of morning
at a household with the breadwinner gone, dead at dawn,
is it still
morning?