Poems
We have got a collection of thought-provoking poems authored by poets from different backgrounds.
HERE IS WATER by ‘Gbenga Adeoba
HERE IS WATERby 'Gbenga Adeoba(After Kechi Nomu’s Your Old Bones are Seeking Wooden Crosses) At the waterside in Boyo, the rituals of movement intensify at dusk. The pull of tides reinvents the shore into a space for things intimate and lost. You could find trinket...
THE MAN WHO WEARS THE SEASONS by Jide Badmus
THE MAN WHO WEARS THE SEASONS by Jide Badmus On the surface you are weak &Your smiles are a broken streamBut nightmares could not break your sleep. You hang your fearsLike jackets in closets& bury sullen memoriesIn unmarked graves. You carry your flaws like a...
WHAT IS YOUR BODY by Onyekwelu Chiwenite
WHAT IS YOUR BODYby Onyekwelu Chiwenite Kingsley Shortlist (Top Six) of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)And he throws my body open, the way youmove into a riverwhen someone is drowning. And my bodyis a dark room...
REMEMBER US by Chibueze Obunadike
REMEMBER USby Chibueze Obunadike Shortlist (Top Six) of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)“Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us” — Sappho a drunk man walks into a room and hits his lover till she begins...
HOW LAST TUESDAY BECAME BLACK TUESDAY by Praise Osawaru
HOW LAST TUESDAY BECAME BLACK TUESDAYby Praise OsawaruShortlist (Top Six) of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)last Tuesday began with showers of sunlight/the kind that melts your spoonful of ice cream/before it arrives at the...
FALLING WATERS by Lade Falobi
FALLING WATERS by Lade Falobi Falling Waters - Second Runner-up of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category) My mother says when it rains and one needs to pee/one does not need to find a toilet.I cry in the rain so she doesn't see.The...
GRIEF WILL REMAKE YOU by Ernest Ogunyemi
GRIEF WILL REMAKE YOUby Ernest Ogunyemi Grief Will Remake You - First Runner-up of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category) “Grief will probably/ redraft your whole/ anatomy”—Caroline Ebeid I have just begun my walk out of dawn& I...
ODE TO OUR BODY ON FIRE by Anthony Okpunor
ODE TO OUR BODY ON FIREby Anthony Okpunor Ode to Our Body on Fire - Winner of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category) Make me a night I have not died in & let me see the way it burns. Because this is life I have envied everything...
THE DEFINITIVE TIME OF NOTHINGNESS by Sheikha A.
THE DEFINITIVE TIME OF NOTHINGNESS by Sheikha A. Her eyes are ponds rippling the moon; snip in the air turning fade and the confusion of a quarrel with the deceased relative's visit in mother's dream is grimier than the clarity of murky water she saw centered in a...
IF GOD WAS A NIGERIAN by Othuke Umukoro
IF GOD WAS A NIGERIANby Othuke UmukoroASUU would strike himtill his sorrow grows a beard. He would be a Yahoo boy or a pimp or a drug dealeror an innocent girl in the cold & dark streets ofItaly tendering white men’s amorous dreamsor all of the above. He would be...
FLOWER PETALS by Ugochukwu Damian
FLOWER PETALS by Ugochukwu Damian for ikedinaobi your country is a hunger that you cannot name your bones are fragile like flower petals & there’s a river in your body that you cannot name & there’s a country emptying this river into itself where queer bodies...
SELF by Adejuwon Gbalajobi
SELF by Adejuwon Gbalajobi I wear my fear around my neck like a tie, my fear, the reason my sleep comes in fits. & anytime I close my eyes, my demon transmogrifies into thoughts, an accuser, a finger pointed at me: "You, you'll be like your father, a waste." "You,...
