Tuesday Poem by Dami Ajayi

AUDITIONS

(For Peter)
We were catching sun,
what was left of it,
beside the shed of the
black squat woman, kind enough
to pick Gulder crowns for Peter’s audition.

Oliver de Coque’s Opportunity on repeat
& a bottle of stout for her troubles.

She pressed us to have her pepper soup;
we declined. Some news about
dressed vultures in chicken’s disguise lingers.

Peter does two hundred press-ups daily.
He is fitter than a fiddle.
He wants to be the next Ultimate man.

I have grown a paunch.
I want to be the next Joyce
& Nabokov & Camus & Faulkner.

I have picked crowns for my audition
at Up Lagos.

 

Oko, 2013.