Tag Archives: #sombre

Shapes of no more Victor Uwaifo said: you buy shirt     shirt tears if God creates soul     soul will go back to its owner the body that we use minimally would turn sands     so i could not tell you to stay & if i break    cascades down goodbye,     goodbye handful of body-sands thrown to the teeth of a starving abyss i won’t cry     for I know i could not hold back your slipping away not that this washes away any pain so many things i want to say      to you just yesterday,     Papa & i writing the biography of you you again felt the weight of those three tubers of yam on your head as you put the soles of your feet on the footprints of your father trekking miles away to the object of desire again you in your childhood backyard when the darkness of noon came with a 1947…

Read more

Riddles of a Lost Boy I am something— wandering  is my native heirloom. my ancestors,               shifting lands &  shape-shifting tongues.    all oduduwa’s milk & honey not sufficing to quench their thirst                                                                                                         for new land.       the result:       a minor(ity) problem.  a leaf has fallen                                                                      too far from its tree.     a people in Kogi                                                      torn apart from their heritage by the thin lines that shape states.                                                    wandering is a family heirloom. I wandered                                                  from my culture as a seed  in my father’s balls                                  in search of greener pastures         to plant me.  which is to say                                                            I was a nomad before I was born. drifting through cities: Abuja, Lagos, Ibadan, and Kaduna. two…

Read more

2/2