POETRY

Ojo Olumide Emmanuel

                      CREDITS: DAISEI TERAZONO

                       

on a black street: memories sheave into a pastiche

 heaves:

the sky drape over broken bodies. 10 pm & rattles. 

 marauders break into a body in kuje & many bodies found their way out.

others levitate on the wings of angels. buses sing fire songs; 

 later, correctional custodians compare notes about the thieving lot. 

  on a black street, [un]known ghost whiz their 

rifles, spraying them like herbicides on a fallowed field--- golgotha.

the foundation of this street are skulls--- rotting.   

 frozen shard of memories sheave, hearts plunge into a concert of dissonance. 

mothers entomb their infants in solitude & 

fathers become lost between the teeth of chaos and calm.

 this street grows flowers of dea(r)th. mothers pluck them, 

squeezed them into elegies by gravestones.

  you heave, & you exhume a mass of anguish,

 slithered like an elephant on your shoulder.

 & this is the temptation of living-

in a dark country with many black streets…

                                 

Ojo Olumide Emmanuel is a Nigerian Poet and Book Editor. He is the author of the Poetry Chapbook Supplication For Years in Sands (Polarsphere Books, 2021). His works have appeared and forthcoming at Ake Review, Feral, Quills, Poemify, Melbourne-Culture, TNR and elsewhere. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The Nigerian Review (TNR).