Harmattan Season – Animashaun Ameen
I rub myself with more lotion than normal. If I am dying inside,
I want to, at least, be shiny on the outside.
An unkindness of raven perched on the barren tree—
I do not understand the language of their songs
Anti-Hubris – Muiz Ajayi
now a young lady
whom i think well-meaning shoves the scripture
in my face while i promenade. & i do not get
vexed. ọlọ́ládé says i bury my tongue
alive each time i evoke its nativity. & i do
not get vexed
Leading Woman – Edil Hassan
and while some say the first displacement
was from the Garden it was actually this:
a woman looked into water, into shimmering light
into a wet mirror, and mistook her face for the face of a stranger
Open – Sarpong Osei Asamoah
I open with joy and they say watch your mouth.
I learn to make something out of emptiness like bells do.
I watch a bullet make poetry out of holes;
the heaviest things to carry are the holes inside ourselves.
All the Saints of Elmina Castle are Wet – Sarpong Osei Asamoah
All the blood is a black road through the sea
All the saints are fishes folded in a wave.
All the gods must be sweet cows slaughtered with silence.
All the boats are a sour sword slice of history.
Drought – Alshaad Kara
Baked beans fried as a doughnut,
We soak into our thousand miseries.
The savannah cleanses itself with its own tears,
Tethers our wraths to those regional ears.
Log and ease the pain in my muscles
Pre-Elegiac Love – Kei Vough
I’ve stumbled upon grief at the expanse of your gaze.
You, my bald queen who lost her hair to a failed chemotherapy.
The night’s silent with premonition.
The stars are sunken
father, son – Martins Deep
somewhere, as you read this poem,
a wraith awaits
the miracle of water
in the wells of his parched eyes
as he plants a kiss
on his son’s brow
one reaches for the other;
sepia for olive
the shore a stage so lovingly set – Alírio Karina
there are so many ways to tell a story about despair (i mean, joy)
how many times, a body between bodies, moving to an old hum,
commits to breath, to touch, to that tilting back of the head
omission – Rabha Ashry
my hair atop my head
like an unfamiliar word
in a language i used to speak
and i come back to tongues
circle back to
my aching eyes
and burning shoulders
With(out) – Khadija Abdalla Bajaber
what they did to me is what they’re still trying to do to me// Love be no god// Love be the devil stretching his legs in the room torn out of girlhood, promised his due// you cannot challenge me with loving me
Call me by my name – Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie
When God called the animals,
two by two. Each came
foreign unto itself. Only knowing its name once
told. A man is called into his name
each time it is spoken.
