Back It Taking – Ernest Ohia
I find myself spent
in the truth of time, I find you napping at its edge,
a miserable obsession. I want this year to thrive. Perhaps
it will give us one or two surprises.
Rot – Belinda Munyeza
I try to tell her who I love, how I love. Where I am holding the shame. But now she is gone. I call out to her and she does not answer. The conversation turns ghost in my mountain heart, next to all the others I buried from the women I love. Then there are graves I am left to think about
Ikpoba Hill – Praise Osawaru
let’s agree that loss is a chained rock pulling
the body to the riverbed.
& it grows pain into a field of wildflowers.
& the tongue becomes a sponge of saltwater.
I catch a dove looking at us from a light pole
& I think of it as an angel in disguise
Cairo Station – Hazem Fahmy
Once a year, revisiting
the possibility of my absence being permanent,
my mother recounts the story of how I almost became
a cautionary tale. About seven, I wandered off,
becoming anonymous in the cacophony
of the Cairo train station
10 Years After My Arrival, I Take an Immigration Satisfaction Survey – Honora Ankong
Weekends at Limbe beach sucking
the flesh off roasted mackerel fish,
long holidays in the village with my grandparents,
pulling groundnut out of the earth, raking my hands
through bunches, feeling the slight pressure of the soil
caked under my fingernails.
Listening to my Father Read His Autobiography – Asmaa Jama
he first tells me i ask him to recount again, the night sky, because i am not looking laterally, at this memory, we do not discuss, how he slept on tarpaulin, instead i draw new, star signs, unseeing of the ground
sometimes we watch scenes of a refugee camp turning ember
Aam – Fahad Al-Amoudi
Uncle leaves the door ajar outside,
dawn ricochets off the mountain faces
into the shop, kicking up everything left behind.
All the clothes hang by their nape on the racks;
dust sweeps up the shoes; nothing
touches the floor for fear of being buried
Blessed is the Past, Most Eternal, Most Merciful – Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni
A man confesses, my country is killing me, and it is forever.
The greatness of horror is in tense. Beauty and terror preening before hourmirrors.
A man confesses, I loved. I loved this land, and his broken heart leaps off the edge breaking hearts inch towards.
The Festival – Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni
I sit in the hours before lullabies shut my eyes, taking census of my sorrows—the tenderness lost, the boisterous children who turn my mind on itself, the silence after a good joke, the period swollen with distance in a lover’s postscript, the fickle warmth of touch, the October earth offering water before a corpse fills its mouth
Morning in Sango-Ota – Pamilerin Jacob
How her broom combs the sand into strips,
the swish of her strokes, the crescent
of her back, the integrity of her wrists.
Footsteps so light, they rebut gravity.
The taillight of her husband’s okada disappears in the distance
Rhapsody for Slumber – Pamilerin Jacob
Not this. Not this loneliness swelling
like a boil, the shiv of insomnia drilling into the scalp.
The neighbors think they are quiet, but love
exposes everything the way light does. On
the other side of the wall, I am pulling through the night
Brotherman, – Ajibola Tolase
Na person daddy lie down for street so. The pain pass my power.
I try hol’ am. I no fit. Water wey pour for my eye
reach to baf. Police say make we no waka for late hour.
Say dem go kill us finish. Remember say all die
