My Mother’s Fragmented Heart – Victor Obukata.
My Mother’s Fragmented Heart I pocket my father’s portrait& keep to heart the gleanings fromfragments of my mother’s heart. & this is me, an artist drawing a father figurefrom this portrait.& I glue the gleanings from fragments of my mother’s battered organ. To success, I will toast the rebirth of my father.All he ever stood for. His sweat. His water & blood. His legacy. & that mother whom he left behind remarries to peace& that her heart adapts to unification. Contributor’s Bio Victor Obukata is a fifteen-year-old writer, who writes poetry and prose. He is a Deltan who writes from Niger State, Nigeria. He is a member of Hilltops Creative Arts Foundation. He is also a member of the Northern Writers Forum. When he is not writing, he can be seen reading, listening to music, or watching movies.
Duty & Lightbulbs – Bright Kingsley Digba.
Duty & Lightbulbs Look at us,two glitching lightbulbs trying to becomewater. the type people fill their mouthswith when they want to pray. we want heavento touch us first forgetting the alley needsits face warm forgetting our feet are losestrings bending into the question of musicand time. time, the loneliness that sticksus to the wall and lets us burn but eats upour death Watch, the world is bending too but hersis into pleasure. it is now that we mustbend our shines to the places they fail to see. Contributor’s Bio Bright Kingsley Digba, mostly known as Bright Kingsley, is a poet, artist, literature enthusiast and student of the Rivers State University, Port Harcourt. He is an budding poet with poems rich in storytelling. Bright Kingsley is a poet that believes in poetry as the language of the earth, and wants others to view the world and it experiences through the light…
Branches – Abdulrasaq Teslim Alade.
Branches A bird perched on,a node coiled with internodes;alley, crossroads,besieged by hefty turns & tonsthe node falls apart. A bird departs,away from its broken home,in search of a cozy solace,it got caught in a fauna’s fun,& lost its way,into the venturous wilderness;an island lost in a fog A bird seeks shelter,into the lair of a behemoth,fallibly fell & slipped,into an ambush of life. We halt at dusk,to lay our backs and heads down,we sigh at the pale moon,while whistling jaws,to the talks of the night crickets,sighing at the branches we branched. Contributor’s Bio Abdulrasaq Teslim Alade is a stylistic and critical-thinking poet, an undergraduate student, and a terrific writer of short narrative stories that awes the reader’s mind. He is also a citizen of Nigeria by birth. He admires reading works on literature, philosophy, and linguistics.He mails at [email protected]. On Instagram @abdulrasaqfholarin. Also, on Twitter @abdulrasaqfholarin.
The Journey in Which Everyone Carries the Anatomy of His Dream – Yahuza Usman.
The Journey in Which Everyone Carries the Anatomy of His Dream when the sun died with a mysterious decision sketched on the tip of barricaded tongues of our home and the other hall that housed our dreams, we slept with a tear-jerking eye that countenanced the deferment of knowing what our home held for our dreams, of course, our fates. we were given a word of optimism, & like love, it came back to us, in our dreams. we woke up, in light, with great hilarity–a pleasant smile hovering over our faces that, before daybreak, sheltered the skin of phobia that our goals would be forced, like the sun, to cast its abode on the bed of a murky plight, unplanned. in delight, we received some calls from a man who re-ignited our wishes; the first time he called, like the moon, we put on our radiant, never-grow-old smile, hoping…
The toils of our heroes – Aderibigbe Ikmot Olaitan.
The toils of our heroes When darkness took the throne, silence became the day’s voice. The tender gaze of the crescent & stars—emitting faint glints put us in the shape of a ball. We espied our progenitors clothed in scars from our elders’ mouths. In the belly of thralldom, they buried their heads. A peek into the tomorrow’s soil, the greatness it didn’t swallow turned them into well-built drums for the flail to happily dance on. Their strife couldn’t wear tears from torture; rather, it gifted its tears as manure to the soil. These stories were waters springing through my eyes, sprinkling hope like a beam of light, awakening the dead flowers. This land! Sleep not! Our heroes’ toils must live! Contributor’s Bio Aderibigbe Ikmot Olaitan, a Linguistics And African Languages student at Obafemi Awolowo University is a dedicated young poet who aspires to be better in the art. She…
Ashawo Glory – Joemario Umana.
Ashawo Glory Within Mama Wire-wire’s drinking palour, the bamboo walls wear the garment of night, the air the smell of tobacco breath and palm wine belch. Flavour N’abania’s ashawo blurts out from the speakers and everyone cheers. Littered here and there are men, drowning their worries down their throat with kegs, some bottles and some smoking, as if to say to their troubles, there, vanish with the smoke in my lungs and in the air. There are women here too, those who make blood rush between a man’s thighs, and are ready to milk a man for a price, maybe a meal. From a distant corner, a man’s words nibble my ears, I could read pain in his words, like a palmist divining destiny, from the lines etched on a palm. There’s a proverb among my people that says, it’s condition that bends the crayfish, so I call out to…
For Her – Ayiyi Joel.
For Her After Gbenga Adeoba (Her Facebook wall—empty of her portrait) For the girl I got to know through facebook For Ruby I met her absence months after she left It’s been two years now. A bird whose unknowing was fluttering Into a family. A home where her love Is the trickles of rain in a desert. Again, I pour myself into the ache of her heart On her Facebook wall. It breaks to me now how people can make your eyes heavy with water And your chest, crackling with flames. And I wish to spool time backwards like disc In the grasp of a dj. To when she never gave In to the call of the noose. To when she never graced her lips with The little bottle with the label of a skull. To when she never desired slitting her wrist For the raw touch & ooze of…
We Disappear – Joel Oyeleke.
We Disappear into prayer and everything unholy dies every syllable of faith becomes a phoneme of light morphemes of grief is the phrase of glee I look at worries and smile – they are the Egyptians I see today and un-see tomorrow sometimes, all a metaphor does is teach hope to peel stone with a knife & place heaven on gravity someday, my body will be a sanctuary of miracle – inferno of glory The Lord dissolves into my mouth & I swallow Him. Contributor’s Bio JOEL OYELEKE is a member of Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation from Osun state, Nigeria. He is a poet, literary enthusiast, God-addict and Literature in English undergraduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun state. Author of THE THEM IN ME (Direwords, 2022), Co-author of LET ME GRIEVE (Arting Arena Magazine, 2023), Winner of the Arting Arena Poetry Prize (2022), Publishing Officer II of the Association…
A Birdsong -Fasasi Ridwan.
A Birdsong I want to make more memories with you but it seems I’m fading into the ones we had already. — Fasasi Ridwan The apparatus that made my body stay in hibernation throughout those years must have been living like a prey standing miles away from hope. Or It must have been that I have become adapted to being an outcast all my life. I mean the weight of these haunting memories must have pulled my soul away from my body. Every night, we filled the air with Fireboy & Joeboy songs, dirges for lovers whose night is covered in imaginations. Your body was rigid —rubbing against mine, against time. How my lips used to get drown in the river of your mouth. How the night watched us in admiration. How the moon was jealous of our shadows that it casts away its light from us. Say, the night…
Man of Dreams – Obongofon Etuk.
Man of Dreams If wishes could materialize and bloom, I’d gather them, a handful or maybe two, And weave their magic through my restless soul, Granting solace, contentment, and grace, For dreams, when realized, bring joyful thoughts, Transforming life’s canvas with colors true. Each morning, I beseech the heavens true, Imploring divine intervention to loom, To guide my path, to shape my thoughts, Bestowing upon me a blessed gift or two, A sprinkle of serenity, a touch of grace, Enveloping and soothing my weary soul. But who am I, this humble wandering soul, To fathom the mysteries of what holds true? Yet, I shall persevere, seeking elusive grace, Chasing after dreams that dance in the loom Of my imagination, where possibilities brew, Whispering secrets, inspiring hopeful thoughts. A man of dreams, I weave a tapestry of thoughts, A dreamer, forever yearning to find my soul, For in the realm of…