Wale Ayinla writes from the ancient city of Abeokuta in Nigeria. He teaches Government at Triumph College. He is a Best of the Net Award nominee, and his recent works appear on Palette Poetry, FLAPPERHOUSE, Connotation Press, The Temz Review, SOBER., and elsewhere. He is @Wale_Ayinla on Twitter. He is the founding editor of Dwarts Magazine.---------
Acceptance in a Summary
on days I move my mouth to the magnet
in the art of mother’s silence,
I [give] you my body
take it…
as a crust
dipped in hyssop
like an embodied parable
the way that leads to salvation;
a democracy of scars and healings
and redemption
in protest of the keyword,
the boy is a religion, of tangled oceans in the hem of the world,
he picks up his worshippers in the middle of the night
in esteemed inebriation:a war leading a god into the arms
of abandonment
the city reeks of war attached to the
shadows of loneliness; a wallpaper of nights
flirting with blues and burns, assuming a rough smooch
on a waltz
in knots, while the cello reminds me of your presence,
your eyes are a lagoon letting the birds flap their wings with innocence,
but
you are just temporary: a god without a heaven.
Threshold
Tomorrow might be different
but tomorrow does not yet exist.
-Safia Elhillo
This clay built your name, and your father’s,
and your father’s father, but it is too feeble
to tether the world from plying. You grow
tusks from the prayers on the lintel of your
lips. No one is home means one won’t find
the sea yearning for voices. No one is home
means pain locks everyone out of your life.
No one is home means no one is home, and
no one will come to stay where a room is a
fork with teeth. Last Sunday, the road christened itself
a letch. You walked the garden with an axe
and, now, you expect bougainvillea where onions
stem from. You plant. You wield. You cultivate.
And baskets pull the evening into you
when you hunch. Every attempt at living is a
religion. To see death is to make grief an act of worship.
Night Dusts with Emerging Grey
A wandering strength happening
between reversed ascensions.
The kids here are given to foul clouds.
Out of a palm comes a floor of letters.
A pure white thirst going invincible.
The wind is biting my nostrils,
draining the past with new narratives.
Baba alawo mo wa bebe…Alugbinrin.
Me moving against the balcony
with fuchsia cold.
The other boy on tattered knickers
stares at the stars bleaching grace
in exchange of the paleness deserting
comprehension. I am faithful to
the wind. In my eyes are promises
loving themselves into blanket
and darkness claiming what originally
belongs to beds.