Last night, just like many nights
under a blue shed, a blue horror was going on.
Whatever happens to the characters in a story remains in it,
Brecht calls this alienation effect.
You want to spell love
so you tell your brother,
Abid, not to return home
to become a ghost in the middle of Tripoli.
Hear the songs of the wind and how people become
black-skinned carcasses in their home.
The Tripoli council is a council of wild birds
picking bones of boys with jack-booted faces.
Since 2011, definitions of things have changed
for humans and for the birds.
Salawu Olajide is a twenty-seven-year old poet, and writes from Ile-Ife, Nigeria. His poems have appeared in Transition, Poetry City, Soul-Lit and so on. He is a 2017 Pushcart Prize for Poetry and Best of the Net Nominee. He is a fish eater and Amala boy.