FORTUNATE TRAVELLER
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an elderly matron
dressed in black
from head to toe
carrying string bags
of market produce
stumbles on uneven cobblestones
pitches heavily to the ground
attempts a mighty heave
falling back with a groan
Armies and ideologies rise and fall.
Your castle, churches, winding streets,
Your cobblestones have watched it all.
The murky days when feet sticky with duty
Dig deep into the saucer-shaped moon river,
Her already creased craters are rippled towards
An infolding…
In The Middle of Third Mainland Bridge The danfo is a hub of abnormalities. This one is being towed by another. In this mobile mini-market, we jostle for space, throw jabs of tonguein search of quiet. The day has taken its tollbut I must endure this torture. A bug crawls on the shawl across a woman’s shoulder – a man by the windowsquashes another. There is an uproar!We fling the bus driver under vocal…
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Looking Back(for Oyorokoto) I turn to search your footsteps from acres of solitude away,to listen to the song of your tide singing home the fishers.but you are gone from me, the way ocean of becoming,its tributaries always beckoning flotsam of dreams,constantly wash young pebbles off your brine shore. I, whom survival weaned from your breast, am underfed.I sleep and wake in Obio-Akpor, in Ikwerre, still starved of language in my State,the…
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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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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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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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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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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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