ELEGY FOR THE FIG TREE by Agbaakin O-Jeremiah

ELEGY FOR THE FIG TREE by Agbaakin O-Jeremiah

Fig tree

Elegy for the fig tree

by Agbaakin O-Jeremiah

but what business do i have   with the living?

we all become slaves   to memories & chains

remain only to be broken. broken by songs,

a figment plucked from the son’s imagination

of sweetness. or at worst, a quenching. verily,

i have never vanquished loneliness. i tremble

at a body in the white shroud, then lowered in

a slow crater made by hands falling & rising.

iyanju  l’agbe n gbin— we sow a seed for this

soil to ponder on.  i feel kin with what’s other

than me. the paw that holds the claws like key

teething into the unknown animal of my body.

why shouldn’t i trust the dark? the unripe fig.

i fear for the obstinately unripe plantain, for

the life it so much guards against a keen knife

& a pot of boiling water & the net of a grill in

the backyard.  but the rot has come to stay. its

blackening peel burnt into potash & camwood

for a lather cleansing us & all our dead. verily,

i’ll bring a dove into my house but let the owl

starve outside. verily, i fear to touch the dead

cock more than a maternal hen gathering her

children in her wings, & the rest in the shadows

of those leavened wings. her eyes red with love

or fear. i love my fears, for they wait to soften

at my embrace. i fear my love will turn sour in

a mouth like a sponge of water turning sour in

a forsaken mouth, after the honey of mere words

& our sweet kiss. what always lingers is the curse.

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

O-JEREMIAH AGBAAKIN holds an LL. B degree from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His poems are recently published or forthcoming in Palette, Poet Lore, Guernica, Pleiades, North Dakota Quarterly, RATTLE, among others. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and his manuscript placed finalist for the 2020 Sillerman FirstBook Prize for African Poets. He has served as editor/reader for Africa in Dialogue, PANK and Jalada Africa.

DEAR DIARY IS THE SADDEST THING YOU WILL WRITE ON A LONG QUIET NIGHT by Anthony Okpunor

DEAR DIARY IS THE SADDEST THING YOU WILL WRITE ON A LONG QUIET NIGHT by Anthony Okpunor

a journal and pens

dear diary is the Saddest Thing You Will Write on a Long Quiet Night

by Anthony Okpunor

these days i dine alone. the world

is at the other side, staring through a

wet window. somewhere between we

still do not meet, but for poems.

but for birds that fly into your throat 

when you fall asleep. 

i wrote all of those poems

& made them fly. 

because i’m here, and i want 

to wish you one of

these lone stars. 

the stenographer wrote your

name on the cover page of his

diary, we almost missed it. 

that day all we needed was 

someone to push us into the wind, 

& call us freedom. 

see how glass doors make us

write these sad poems? 

see how rain comes & knows

the softest part of two bodies? 

the rain will remind us of days

& slow dances, how to move lightning 

from a lover’s eyes to their tongue.

today i’m awake and something seams

a rising sun to my window. 

i am sorry we all

die sometime.

let’s make a map of thirst & young. 

let’s see where we stop being thirteen. 

let us tune this body out &

feel the whole world

break free for us. 

the signs will only come for the 

flesh, not us. 

let’s sow our knees

to the hands of a clock. 

why do we only laugh sometimes? 

have you asked why a 

clown will choose your happiness

over theirs?

i want to be a clown &

eat up the butter in your hair. 

call me names, dreams

you try to imagine,

i promise to know you

final notes of the song. 

i will hear of birds hours after

you sing the walls to sleep. 

we can be voyagers, you see. 

i will keep throwing 

stones into a river till

i’m old. 

this way there is a castle

at the bottom of 

the ocean for us. 

there will be sand, salt

and hunger; you being

a soloist filled with 

names of [   ].

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)

dear diary is the Saddest Thing You Will Write on a Long Quiet Night

by Anthony Okpunor | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANTHONY OKPUNOR is an emerging Nigerian writer who discovered poetry and writing in general, as a better form of self-expression. He lives and writes from Asaba in Delta State. He is a student of the University of Benin at the time. He was shortlisted for the 2019 Nigerian Student Poetry Prize. He was also shortlisted for the SEVHAGE/Angya Poetry Prize 2019. He emerged as winner of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (poetry category). He was a finalist for the 2020 Palette Spotlight Poetry Award. His works have appeared on online platforms including African Writer, Praxis Magazine and Rattle.

CENTO FOR ISOLATION by Wale Ayinla

CENTO FOR ISOLATION by Wale Ayinla

misty hand pressing against a glass

Cento for Isolation

by Wale Ayinla

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

The way that the sea fails to drown itself every day.

I wake up & it breaks my heart. A return to the strange

idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt,

the empty. In an effort to get people to look into each other’s

eyes more, we just gather on the balcony & swallow all the silence

until we’re filled with fireflies & sleep.

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WALE AYINLA is a Nigerian poet, essayist, and editor. He is a Best of the Net Award and Best New Poets Award nominee, and his works appear or are forthcoming on Palette Poetry, Connotations Press, Waccamaw, Glass Poetry, Existere and elsewhere. He is @Wale_Ayinla on Twitter. He is the founding editor of Dwarts Magazine.

APOCALYPTO by Rachel Magaji

APOCALYPTO by Rachel Magaji

graveyard

Apocalypto

by Rachel Magaji

blood_ 

in my village, a six-year-old girl became a canvas & her once clear skin was a shrine carved with obscene figurines. sharp machete-like pencils with clear lines cut through her skin like tattoos & she bled crimson flowers. 

 

fire_

the moon & the stars hid their beam & betrayed us. the only glows were yellow embers & black smoke that flew from the structures we called home once. we raced breathlessly into the starless night, embracing the darkness we dreaded. 

 

water_ 

i think my neighbor’s alarm broke again. i didn’t hear their feet dragging languidly. their mother’s sonorous voice & their gruesome banter at the well didn’t permeate my dream. 

‘god must be good,’ i smiled to myself. till i saw their heads and their bodies standing apart. 

 

 how do you hold the ocean in your fist? 

 

spirit_

i was told at seven that the blood of an innocent boy once cried & his murderer got an achilles foot. 

i do not believe ghosts exist anymore, grandpa lied. dead bodies only become dirt & whisk away with the wind. 

earth_

i fear my eyes are 

becoming a reservoir

of cascading water (tears)

& it’s getting harder

to keep it in.           

 

 ‘dust to dust, ashes to ashes’,

the priest reads & hurls a stone to my chest with his tongue (words) & kindles the fire in my nose (burns) & i convulse on the ground beside my brother’s grave. 

 

word_

white: the color of the pristine coat on the pretty woman standing beside my bed. 

 

 ‘what do you remember from last night?’ she asks. 

 

/my lips swear an oath of secrecy/ with my tongue & hides/ the truth in the locket/ dangling in my throat. /she shakes her head in disbelief/ her face white like her coat. / 

/no! like the color of fear/. 

 

how do you master the knife?

you don’t get caught (cut)!

 

a tear escapes my left eye as my mother pushes her broken body (matted in bandage) towards me, eyes sore & swollen. 

 

she smiles weakly ‘one of them was arrested. he’ll be taken to the rehabilitation center’ she says to me.

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RACHEL RABO MAGAJI is a creative writer, digital marketer, and environmentalist from Kaduna State. She’s a graduate of Environmental Management from Kaduna State University, Nigeria. Her literary work has been featured in Hedgerow #130, Haikuniverse, Femku issue 22, SprinNG Literary Movement, Akitsu Quarterly 2020 Summer, The bamboo hut, and Abbyamam’s blog. Connect with her on Instagram (@dr_raeee), Twitter (@rachierabson), and Facebook (Magaji Rachel).

HOW THE DOCTOR AT WARD C EXPLAINS ISOLATION TO HIS COVID-19 PATIENTS by Chukwu Emmanuel

HOW THE DOCTOR AT WARD C EXPLAINS ISOLATION TO HIS COVID-19 PATIENTS by Chukwu Emmanuel

ethnic woman in medical mask on gray background

How the doctor at ward C explains isolation to his covid-19 patients 

by Chukwu Emmanuel

Day 1

When your tender body

begins to quiver

in this small moments of grief.

 

Day 3

Know the weight of anxiety in your chest level,

some concepts cannot be theorized 

When holding synthesized sadness to a spot.

Day 7

The wound measures how much color

it has taken from us. 

Accept it by becoming familiar with what lives inside you.

 

Day 10

Truth is you cannot cut twice

It is either you cannot pray

Or you love the formless shape of fear.

 

Day 14

To live is to accept what we cannot love

All the cases exploding around

you are simply fireballs.

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)

How the doctor at ward C explains isolation to his covid-19 patients

by Chukwu Emmanuel | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHUKWU EMMANUEL is a Nigerian. He is a medical student with the spirit of writing in his blood. His works have been shortlisted for Kalahari Review Igby Prize for Nonfiction in 2019 and in 2018 for both Prose and poetry categories for Benue Literary Festival. His works has been published by or are forthcoming in Praxis’s magazine, Africanwriter magazine, Libretto magazine and numerous blogs. He’s currently working on a collection of a collection of stories documenting medical life. 

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