FORTUNATE TRAVELLER

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Travel poems

Poetry

The Dark Green Conifers by Robert Ronnow

The Dark Green Conifers another day in the woods. on Strawberry ridgelooking out over undulating green hills tothe next great wall ridge of mountains. the lastmorning clouds left from last night’s stormhanging in the valley mistily. the sun eventuallyburns them away. the respect between old Paul Karlsen and I continuesto exist. even though he’s a Mormon and I’m a fallenNew Yorker. the work is comparatively easy, liftinghundred pound bags, so…

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Poetry

South South-West by Tony Voss

1 Warmbad The pastor’s house, the fort, the mission church,plastered white, the police station grey stone:women in bright doeks, swaying in the sun,singing ‘With one consent let all the earth’: the kaptein’s goats, a hundred head or more,boerbokke, red and white, bearded, lob-eared,a commando on the march, a high herd,drumming around him, as if off to war. The magistrate, the captain of police,the bank manager, are here to celebratethe oldest…

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Poetry

Recovery by Jo Weston

Recovery Seas of enlivening magenta under a sky of azure blue, frame a canary in an avocado tree.Lizards sunbathe on the path below. Leaves of banana trees sway in the breeze,as farmers wrap the fruit in sapphire andthe sea, enveloping pebbles, pulls them back to bed. The sun lowers its glow behind the mountainas the scent of jasmine fills the air, while, from a cobbled alley, comes the sound of…

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Poetry

Night Gods at Feast by Kechi Nomu

I. Night Gods at FeastAfter Wendy Xu’s Several Altitudes of Not Talking a sign here reads: Sell your deadInvert the batteries. this is, of course, an error. mine or the sign maker’s. our headlights in lieu of distance, travel the length of eyes.      anoint the sheen              of a gate. we approach at this uncontrollable hour night gods at feast; local beer and pink-bodied chickens held in a spit:the world is a puzzle…

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Poetry

Reinvention by Uche Nduka

REINVENTION I The rope of distance broke you sat there reinventing Lagos islands got drenched inside us black crows torched our scars the lessons of attraction the avalanche might actually get kinder wandering in all capes but the death of desire is not what you keep hearing about II Soon all this will be memory stitching yourself into a blue sky, an open door that’s what it says in get-aways…

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Poetry

a road’s tale and other poems by tosin gbogi

a road’s tale the road is a riddle with a thousand answers                                                                   —Niyi Osundare the road is one trickster of an angel divining destinies at a deserted holy-trinity round: to dawn’s hope a path to noon’s heated light another and the last, to night’s final cry – silence when i wake up in the morning the road lies ahead of me in wait full of prayers – answerable and…

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Poetry

Addis Hot Box and Other Poems by Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein

ADDIS HOT BOX Two Addis sisters locked shoulders in a jello mould of jazz. The club was a hot box of twinkly stars and loose laws of rain. Smoked a pack of Nyala hoping for a husband that night. Spent decades in the bathroom, zipping up my past. It was midnight when I left, street dogs were falling in love, Howling commitments far exceeding any I had made In my…

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Poetry

Lagos Pastiches – Two Poems by Adeeko Ibukun

          Coming to Lagos The landscape is first within. But the stream of crab buses makes calls into spaces, perches for gregarious birds. One laying on you as awareness. The bodies are hurried motion, blending through distance. The metrics on a dioptra are found vocabularies, motioned eloquence articulating the depths and meters; hoary metals troubling through a climb: the arcing ebb towards the Island. Then he is welcomed by the…

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