My sister’s prayers

My sister’s prayers

(after Derek Walcott’s ‘Love After Love’) I sometimes walk with Halima to a building where her pelvis is a bow and her legs draw whirlwind-circles on the roofing. I point out how badly her track suit needs stitching she smiles, pretends not to hear like when she prays...
To want to die

To want to die

is to let your feet stiffen into a pillar of salt, to let them be torn apart, in a room full of dehydrated men, pilgrims advancing by faith, each seeking your temple key each seeking kind admittance each supplicant crooning passwords. Calling out. Come, salt of the...
Gángàn, Ogénè, and Gidó

Gángàn, Ogénè, and Gidó

Photo Source: Tiv Cultural Carnival (TCC) What shall I say of my age? There isn’t much. If you care, Hear it from the dirge Swirling in the village square. Araola is drumming gángàn But she’s honing a grating tune. The echoes call out the void Of the clean years...
In Exchange

In Exchange

for seven medium-sized chickens, a promise of clear skies, a rich husband and a fertile womb, what wonder have I bartered? And what of these unseasoned tragedies of mine, are they without sponsor? Did I subsidize my own agony, floating, entranced in that old sea,...
Coriander Seeds

Coriander Seeds

An eighth of my care for you is due to that copper smile, and the vague aroma of coriander under your fingernails, and this glance you drop in my lap, which I must nurse, of course. I forget the other seven eighths; but if pressed, I might say: you stayed. Alexis...
PRAYERS AFTER PANTHEON

PRAYERS AFTER PANTHEON

nobody told us knuckles were a train track for prayerbeads until we lost everythingand onlookers said ‘pray harder’the church folk saidjob is a man who lost everythingand was given morebut listenthe word/name job triggers mebecause i broke my skull in pursuit of oneso...