dance

i will leave the dead in your body some room
to dance. i will sit beneath the baobab tree with

drums of tulips by self-acclaimed craftsmen.
i will call forth boneless children & make 

seats from udala trees for them. we'll sit,
we'll eat, & drink too. we'll be the motivators

the eyes of the dead shall see. our diastema shall 
vomit tears of glass. we'll clatter cymbals—the ones

that make the dead horny—but if jinxes
envelope us, may the gods in your hips cast

us a spell of joy. it will not be a dream &
it will not be in real life. do you know what

it is like to feed your eyes with the dead
dancing to a living music? we are not

calling it a day anytime soon—the sun of
the dead does not set—our fingers listen to us

when we teach them to slap hard the
cheekbone of the drum for the dead

*àdàbà ikú, wá gbé wa ró

Flourish Joshua is a (performance) poet from Nigeria, a NaiWA poetry scholar, 2nd place winner of the 7th Ngozi Agbo Prize for Essay, Managing Editor at NRB, Interviews Editor at Eremite Poetry & Poetry Reader at Bluebird Review and Frontier Poetry. He is published (or forthcoming) on London Grip Poetry, Ghost City Review, Brittle Paper, Indianapolis Review, Bluebird Review, and elsewhere. Say hello on Instagram/Twitter @fjspeaks.