Tag Archive for: Tuesday Poem

Tuesday Poem by Adedayo Agarau

/in 
two weeks before my birthday

i.
as we fucked
lights out 
         the bed shook like
         a tree tormented

                      by rain
         your name 
        hid the shame in my mouth

the doorway was open 
                    i cried black into your back
kissed your neck  
                drove you crazy  drove you out of my mind

& as the day bled into nightfall
                       everything crumbled into the ground
you said, i’m cumming ade

                  i am still waiting for the arrival of rain

ii.
for light’s sake / i pluck moon from the sky and place it in this poem / no girl loves a poet as his drafts do / i remember reading you my poem about cunnilingus before flapping your clit with the leaflet of my tongue / i remember how the room wore your mouth / how you turned like the hand of a clock & guided me into the bowels of your body with your hand / but that is not enough to mourn you / not suitable / to decipher how beauty can mean iku in another language

iii.
i want to be left alone 
                 i carry a bible to go in search of god
all i see is a museum  a little light  & another little light
                 falling out of the holes you used to fill with your throat

Tuesday Poem by Efe Ogufere

/in

IMMERSION
(For Oniovosa)

two sets of little feet shuffle
in a sea of periwinkle shells,
keenly taking lessons
on patience and deception
from scruffy fishermen in Orerokpe.
sustenance as a bait for sustenance.

if death has no allure to the living
-little brother squirms when
a worm wriggles in his grasp-
why then do damaged men
pour from a bridge into the deep?

hook ready, the fish folk signal
for silence to wash over us,
each breath metered as though
a tasting of fine wine before a feast.
our offering to the river is a painful wait
for the tugging of the line.

brother rises as though in a trance
and plunges into the river
viscosity shows no spine
as the film of oil breaks
and the black adorns him in its sheen.

I still remember not flinching,
nerves of steel, or shock,
or simply dearth of common sense,
until he was baptized three times.
to this day mother still chides
about a siren’s unanswered call.

Tuesday Poem by Olajide Salawu

/in
HOTSPOT
I am meeting my lover for the first time.
And in the scene, her skin
is dark with kinky grasses growing on her head.
I ask her why she would leave her demon
back home and walk up to me in a strange
body and why her eyes are not patented
in their marionette colour.  The purple-pink
of her mouth has melted into a brown pond of grief
while the moon is somewhere at peace
above us.
I am meeting my lover for the first time but
I am remembering another girl
with corral teeth and feral eyes.
In the scene, she describes herself for me
adding flowers and our last emojis;
inside the planetary depth of her dimples,
I look like an archeologist
discovering his first fossil
through the violent breath of the wind.
I am meeting my lover for the first time.
Will you like to meet her too?
We are at Hotspot of the city
sitting at a table with echoes of Lana Del Rey
reaching us at a side and smoke of barbecue
burning the ozone layers of our love
as our faces reach an eclipse.

Tuesday Poem by Tonney Ibe

/in

RELEASE

Maybe our scars are different,
But we have both bled:
The inmost dwelling
A haunted house.
Scraped on the keel,
This body hikes on its heel
In search of the infamous hill,
Where peace burns eternally:
It is El Dorado!
My wounds are vales oozing
Steam, hot lava, and mild tremors;
My life, a festival for flies
To feed as I bleed
And brood, and break.
I have contemplated in the dark,
The devil’s deed
One time too many.
I saw heaven flaked in rum
Running from a crystal decanter,
A solemn wish to die drunk,
And stay dead until a waking.
So why cloak the gash
Dealt by life’s lash
Under checkered smiles?
Cry, Scream,
Burst at the seams!
Maybe our scars are different,
But pain is a universal brunt.
Yours I’ve carried before,
Mine you might feel sometime.
If only sleep slaked worries,
The monotonous honking of lorries
Would scurry into the distance.
If only the roadmap to clarity,
Were more than a dream in death,
It would all be for nought.
Mining the black dot
That is a lifelong commitment,
I am crying, screaming,
And bursting at the seams!
A new scar is underway.

Tuesday Poem by Akin Akinwumi

/in

Five Haikus

1.
I put down the year
Like a mad dog. Once welcomed,
It ran off with me.

2.
Standing at the door,
Unannounced and hat in hand,
Is the beginning.

3.
Now is the right time
To turn a new leaf and ink
The feathers of thought.

4.
Slowly becoming
Me, that which I fear and flee,
I end up myself.

5.
Seed my days with life;
Of morns and dews and chirps and
Roads worth sojourning.

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.