Shitta Faruq Adémólá

because I know the philosophies of
the mirror that laughed at my ugly eyelash,
the seas I sew with silk meander like the
thickness of whetted throats, calling the bastard
brother in the grave that forgot to light me
the remnants of his brain
to calm the stenches of a battered kwashiorkor-n* boy.

I don’t want to see how the hope of a black boy
breaks like the branches of Mimosa, like
the flood running down the streams of my eyes, and
like hell again, because hell is a smoke that crawls
incessantly into the feet of night children to,
with daggers, break the brightness that lights here
in our hearts.

I don’t want to see how hope falls like unripe mangoes,
because if they do, half of
the moon will see the impulses of their
brokenness in the right thumb of malignant fires,
and we will burn more than the hell that slapped
our faces before.

I want to yearn for the sounds of fallen
stars, like how gunshots thrill the hearts
of a little boy.

I want to see how hope rises like perdition, not for it
to stake the lives we hold, but for our candles to stand
thicker, and light for themselves, hungry looking lights.

*kwashiorkor – a form of malnutrition caused by protein deficiency in the diet, typically affecting young children in the tropics.

The table looks nice… a milligram of mounds sits on it.
It is a ball… Silence is a golden fortune we worship. Only
spittles birthed from delicacies dare break it… Like a thief with abs.
Winds tussle… My father’s friend is bitter of caves… He says
it exposes the fall of needles… He says the nipple of a strumpet
is worshipped… He says it is fire… Another clears his mouth
with the back of his hand… Belches… Drinks from the goblet
keeping the undiluted wines… Clears the disturbances in his throat
Voice guttural… He says he knows the story of the snail hidden
in the murkiness of the shell… How his mother sauntered many times
for his eyes… Belches again… Picks a call from a Muslim friend
I hear him say… Tomorrow, we are doing today… Damn lockdown!
Damn the pit they dug for us to feast bloods… To feast the flesh of our thumb
Another talks… Eyes red… The food i am tasting is here, but God.
I am eating… One ear opening itself to the uproar… I tear the
flesh of the chicken with relish… The wine, cold.
Another stands… When next I reincarnate, this country will hate me
I see him walk out…

shrieking facets of droppings of little rains; my
eyes are cubicles of tiny falls – when what I
eat is the stains of the mouths of dogs – when in
my dream, I suffer isolation. I want

to learn how to unclog the manacle that sits on
the writhing of my caged tongue – blue
sea and blurred visions. and because my hand is a pendulum
clock, the sisters of my sisters of my
father’s brother chuckle; they moan with jests – my
morning is a mourning of salty ice.

in schools, teachers tell us of parrot’s loquacious
protests, crafts incessantly from the
shackles of hefty hands and boring clogs of chains- we
laugh our lungs, stupid for the truth.

this plight is a sand of non-retreating pain our
hand will only phase its walls of stone – man, I learned
to speak to my shadow in silence – Our Lord’s Prayer(s)
never left the bricks that guide my mouth.

the girl in Sambisa knows how whips get lashed on the
tenderness of backs,
the penises of little boys hoping death is a Plato of
sweet pains; and because we never saw what they see,
we jump like toads into the shoes that wear them.

I sing for a night of a happy moon –
I wish to hear the fall of stars, coming
to define to me the ancestral home of freedom.