Poetry

One of the critical comments on humour I often return is Humour, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria of the foremost Nigerian critic, Ebenezer Obadare. Obadare showcases critically how the work of humor is central to the understanding of Nigerian society. He explores how humour by cartoonists, dramatists, and stand up figures power resistance through […]

ASANTEKumasi, your name, a tree with millions of golden branches, a border of origin from which your mother was missing until she flickered on the ghostly lane, & again in the city under Oboase.Your children, named after historical wars of a stranger who intruded yourterritory. In their manhood might have met a man inscribed as […]

The first frame is steady: smoke in the distance; a montage of bodies— singers and drummers, acrobats, names forfeited momentarily to their craft. Drumbeats for a cue, almost an epiphany, and you pan for signs in a portion of the square alien to gardening. It is a given: the bàtá rhythm heralding the masquerades now […]

In the words of Nigerian poet, Odia Ofeimum, “A city is like a poem. You enter it and you enter into a world of concentrated time.” Odia’s observation makes us think of the city as malleable, changing from time to time, switching tempo from moment to moment. The African city, we guess, can be fast […]

In the cities, chit-chatting women with broken heels right their slipping sleeves with one hand and remove gums from their mouths with the other to paste the obituary of poems merely to do “justice” Posters hanging on for life to traumatized walls bearing the vague impression of poems tortured contortionists dissolving into amorphous ink Their […]

– Ọ̀dọ́jà The horticulturist says February is for flower Not for love, so I go into the field In search of plant I once dreamt of Until I find it, and touch and burn and soften under the fire pump of its flamy fingers, And not a metal can hold The frame of this body […]

i damage you─ beautifully. late evening nurse. i come with a bloodless adze, glucose meter & a satchel full of thermometers & ice packs. i put my fingers in your mouth & record your temperature. i detect everything; the hot breath of roof pressing heavily against your knee & quiet volcano in the compression of […]

today, i am the little crow that gloom has nothing against. lightning bugs find a home under my nails. i choose life, untethered from the clasp of time & existence. the art of living is not so hard to learn. there is beauty in the ephemeral. re-see these familiar elements. embrace the inalienable order of […]

stormy eid. rain washes the dua off our tongues. old central mosque brimming with bodies the brown of archipelago barks. i witness a crippled boy bum-walk a blind man to the front row of the saf’. & my guilt puckers beneath my skin. cracks in the rusted zinc-roof which used to pour sunlight into the […]

Ní ayé mìíràn mo fẹ́ jẹ́ bàbá láì fojú sunkún àwọn ọmọ mi, láì ní ìrírí ètùtù wíwo àwọn ọmọ mi padà sílé bíi ara tí wọ́n kákò bíi ẹní-ìkírun, láì lo awọn alẹ́ mi pẹ̀lú wọn láti máa sọ ìtàn ìlú tí onílé ti ń di àjòjì tí wọ́n ń wá ibùgbé. Mo fẹ́ […]