Category: AP36

Loving the World, that it Loves me back

in those days of despair
that every word was a prayer,
and understanding
the gravity of that promise,
i promised it. i said:
i love you, i am here for you.

i prayed:
i love you, i am here for you.

i prayed,
for Love.

 

To Me

your desire: a performance
mine: a prayer

but is it not, eventually, 
a matter of perspectives?

shut up,
please.

comforter,
comfort me.

 

Egbiameje Omole (they/he) is a poet, editor, and performance artist working from Ibadan, Nigeria. Formerly known as Joshua Morley, they have had other queer poems (like the two above) published in Olney, Corporeal, En*gendered, Stone of Madness, and Boy Brother Friend. Find them @morleyxoxo on Twitter and Instagram.

 

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what they call indigenous

i am from everywhere i been

your borders don’t mean nothing to me 
but they mean everything to you

the composition of your blood does matter, 
is it hot or is it cold?

i am from every land i been as i am from 
every soil i touch,

your borders don’t mean shit to me

 

Vina Nweke is a writer and artist based in Pittsburgh, PA. Their work is centered on interrogating materiality and troubling those sticky boundaries of being. They are currently working on their BA in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Africana Studies from Williams College. They are a member of the hotbed collective and their work has been previously published in The Republic and Bunker Projects.

 

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The Rhetoric of Persecution: An Essay with Quotes from John 16:2

Quoting Paul, this pastor
says he doesn’t mind
being cancelled

for declaring people
like me an abomination.
He’s ready to die,

be persecuted for this:
his right to keep me a secret,
locked up, or, if merciful,

have me corrected via therapy.
There are about two
billion
Christians in the world.

Some queer, afraid, Nigerian.
The handful of us, prey. Tell me
how
a boy kissing another boy

is persecution.

They will put you out, Jesus
said,
his eyes on mine as he spoke

in Gethsemane. O Christ,
your children have made a mess
of Love, killing in your name,

tyres around necks,

bodies aflame.
They have built Hell

in your honour, made
the gospel a horror.

Zeal, when sharper than

God, will lead to lynchings.

…in fact, the time is coming
when anyone who kills you

will think they are offering
a service to God.

I kiss you, my boy,

in the name of the Lord,

my boy, I kiss you.

 

Prayer for Queer Abandoned

Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me. Teach me your way,
LORD; lead me along a safe path because of my oppressors. (Psalm 27:10-11)

God will direct you into laughter.
She loves you.

Resist the Nigerian suggestion
of
a Divine Apartheid. God is not

a man.
Not a pastor, priest, bishop, deacon.
She loves you, will tend to your wounds.

God will direct you
into laughter.
She will direct you.

God will direct you into freedom.

 

Zach Tanimola is a queer poet and teacher from Nigeria. When not reading, he is birdwatching. 

 

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Salat

somewhere in the mind is a mosque.

the adhan is called, believers fall, on all fours

& kettles are scattered, water runs from them into drains,

carrying the sins of a hundred and one men.

a boy rushes in, reaches to scoop this bleach

of an element.         he’s scared, his faith’s pendulum

effect turning him, too, into a circle. can i ever be

purged? he asks.          another question seeps in after the second

face wipe & he washes thoroughly on the third.     iqaamah

is made, his hands are at his feet, his heart, too.     steadily,

he proceeds to join a string, connected toe to toe, on the ruku.

alhamdulillah, he whispers, there’s still a chance after all.

in the sitting between sujud, he wonders,         thinking

about that incident, carefully shredding the thought,

like a smoked fish being deboned.     he’s almost at this

skin, when a takbir turns electric, jolting in him the unexplainable.

how could I be thinking about that?   just how?    

wa a’la ali ibraheem innaka hameedun majeed, a ritual completed.

he looks inward again. will this pass? will I move through this?

questions still swim.   staring in the eyes of a stranger, he sees

the same despair in a different shade.     a salam & a smile, he’s given.    

he searches for words, for bones, for strength to return this gift.

wa alaikum salam warahmatullah wabarakatuh, he finally offers.    for some

reason, a chip falls off his qualms, he feels it.     well, seems asr

washed this off a bit,    i better make sure to pay maghrib his visit, too,

he concludes.        perhaps chances still live after all.

 

Taiwo Hassan is a writer of Yorùbá descent, a poet and a vocalist. A 2x Best Of The Net Nominee, his poems have appeared in trampset, Kissing Dynamite, Lucent Dreaming, The Shore, Brittle Paper, Dust Poetry Magazine, Ice Floe Press, Wizards In Space and several other places. He’s also an undergraduate student of Demography and Social Statistics at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Osun State, Nigeria. His debut chapbook, Birds Don’t Fly For Pleasure is published by River Glass Books.

 

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My Lover Has No Face

_ _ _  ~ –
_ _ _  ~
_ _  _ ~  – – -_
_ _  _  _

_ _  -~  ~  -~ —
– – –  -~ ~ ~

– – –  – – –  – – -_
– – –  – – ~~

– ~ ~~ —
– – ~ ~ ~~

~~~ – _ _
– –   – –
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Deze tekst kwam tot stand in het kader van een residentieproject van het Vlaams-Nederlands Huis deBuren (www.deburen.eu) in samenwerking met de stichting Biermans-Lapôtre.

what’s up?

mom carries multiple faces in her bag
each church activity knows a different one
dad lost the remote control somewhere
between five languages and his mind
like the pursuit of happyness
but with less action
of a well-meaning parent
it is well repeating itself
from a dried-up hollowed calabash
sampling the title song of our lives
renunciation becomes
a habit when with every new haircut
colleague’s introduce themselves
reparations for 17EU per head
malaysian kinky curly
aliexpress sells 6 bundles
for only 30EU in total
charlotte adigéry rocks I know I shouldn’t do it but
do it     but
do it     but
do it     but
do it     but
do it     but
              friends
with hushed breasts slide
clippers through my TWA while
what’s up? blasts, hair falls, hearts frail
on my wooden floor
our voices are getting raspy
and we drink red wine but I don’t like red wine
which reminds me of my mom
bumping against a train chair on our way back
spilling grape juice
yelling ẹ̀jẹ̀ẹ Jésù!
while I walk through the door
my sister says it’s giving
on a spiritual journey
I’m not as usual as usual
a man working
for the tax authorities, therefore
cannot give me his
phone number, therefore
asks mine
to go out for a drink sometime

not today

one of those     friends howls
like a wolf when his strap-on won’t
and calls his mom
I don’t tell him it’s anonymous
men after complimenting ask
if they could come on my face
all this was way easier as a pre-adolescent
I just had to open
and shut my mouth
charlotte adigéry sings but sometimes
I’m judy, penelope (no home, no phone, no car, no bed)
or sandy on a sunday (no home)
way back when
on stardoll I got advised to go a few tints lighter
if I wanted to gain more friends
well at least this is my true face
when I write it’s not to leave
a footprint, nor for the next generation
they’d laugh at me, is2g
wherever after

I pass by the attenuation well

 

Pelumi Adejumo is a runaway pastor child, writer, (vocal) artist and lucid dreamer living in the Netherlands. Writing on/with migratory grief, African/Black Pentecostal music and alienation. She uses glossolalia, unintelligibility and linguistic plurality to open up disruptive and rhythmical possibilities. She wrote soms ik voel mij zombie, a text exploring multilingualism in grammar. She has a BA in Creative Writing and is enrolled for an MA in Fine Arts. Her thesis explores the relationship between Yoruba praise poetry and the concept of àṣẹ; how these influence the understanding of language and the role of a poet in creating and archiving cultural identity. 

She has written essays on visual art, language and artist books for Mister Motley and Metropolis M. She has written for nY, de Gids, het Nationale Theater, deBuren, Nationale Opera & Ballet, Sonsbeek Biennale 20-24, Tent, and performed at festivals such as Into The Great Wide Open, Transpoesie and Read My World. She lectured and speaks to students on poetry, identity and transdisciplinary methodologies at LUCA school of arts, ArtEZ, Rietveld and Sandberg. This year she joined the programming team of international literature festival Read My World in Amsterdam. Her most recent publication was a letter exchange in response to the Dutch translation of Sick Woman Theory for publishing house Chaos x Das Mag. And the album Public Relations with a collective of musicians and writers. 

 

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Excerpt from “Corridors of Power”

 

Daniel Obasi is a multifaceted artist. Attracted to old cinema and Afro-Futurism, this Nigerian born Artist is deeply concerned with advancing the scope of African narratives. Consistently working and drawing inspiration from his city Lagos, Nigeria, Daniel is famous for exploring subject matters like sexuality, masculinity, beauty, cultural symbolism, Afrocentric fantasy and human relations. Daniel Obasi’s works birth a certain idealism to Afrocentric concepts; whimsical, soft yet powerfully contrasting with sharp silhouettes, colors and stories. Today, Daniel Obasi is based between Lagos and Paris working internationally as a photographer and director.

 

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Excerpts from the series “Is this a Woman?”

Wearing My Love II

Is This Sex, Is This Poetry?

 

Dandelion Eghosa is a 28 year old non-binary and queer visual artist whose work explores home, the identities of Afro-lgbtq+ people and human expressions in everyday life. By presenting the personal stories of their community through diverse visual mediums and storytelling, their work offers a fresh interpretation of queer imagery. In the last two years their practice has focused on researching the role of performance in African queer archival practices. They have a passion for experimenting with mediums that encourage the development of the human thought, beliefs, and feelings.

 

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Weather for Two

To love is to undress our names
—Octavio Paz

Lover, tonight I baptize you with my mouth.
Trace the velvet & sandpaper of your skin

with my lips. Dip into the honeyed bouquet
of you. Fill myself with your every flavor.

Touch you until your sins & your ghosts
have nowhere left to haunt. Tonight,

let me relearn your wounds. Put on
soft music. Light candles. All your hauntings

know how to undress your sadness. But
when I undress you, I fill myself

with a bountiful harvest. Here, we make
our own Wet Season.

I too know the wild ache of want. I stand
in awe of such a blessing. Knowing fire

comes from the root stem of ‘yes’
‘again’ ‘please’ ‘more,’ my thighs

these hands, are sugar to salvation.
I am greedy heaven, hungry

to make you a shivering night. Sing:
god of gripped sheets, of the curious tongue.

How you learn to twist & pull,
loosen & partition me.

How I have taught your hands to build me
into a nation of hungry mouths,

to make me speak in tongues
until I am a pool of myself.

To be possessed by the wet gallop
of flesh thrumming your labor.

Even after we come apart,
there’s a way in which you open

me & I stay that way.

Originally published in Spells of My Name

How to Spell Infinity

The sun—red and singular with longing. Outside, cold once gathered the dream of snow.
Now it’s spring. Who I once was is gone, one self out of another. Season into season.
The fields return to green. Let me be brave like the wildflowers who challenge
the completion of death. Your human problems are irrelevant to me, says the wildflower,
My job is to populate the fields with beauty. To die back to the earth then return. It’s true:
I survived my father and now I am endless—the bullet sung back into the barrel,
the arrow unsung, the brute hand at last out of reach. In this land, there was no sleep,
just longing with my eyes closed. Now, I can kneel my body back to the soil.
I’m opening the blinds. I’m setting the table, taking out the good silverware.
I’m preparing a great banquet to celebrate with everyone I love. It was no one’s birthday
yet we sing anyways. Pass me the rice and stew; I haven’t eaten this good in so long.
I’ve come to understand a person’s wounds by the joy they resist. I say of my selves:
I was whole before my father made me. The peace that comes not from his absence but
despite his echo through the forest. Light filling my cup. As if by miracle there are new days ahead
and I am on my way to be kissed by them. Field of Tenderness, open.
The world made gentle beneath my hooves. I am made infinite by love
and such love makes my hair grow long. A sweetness only the body could make.
When I was a child, I planted heads in the garden in hopes of growing better fathers.
I mixed up percussion and concussive, but both are music. I say of myself: I am worthy
of every gallop towards salvation. I toast with my selves, and sunlight goes down glowing.
Believing his harm spellbound my legs, I ran and ran until the earth fathers me a song.
I look up and can hear it. I didn’t know the hummingbirds knew my name.

Originally published in Spells of My Name

 

I.S. Jones is an American / Nigerian poet and essayist. She has received support in the form of fellowships, retreats, and residencies from Hedgebrook, Callaloo and Brooklyn Poets. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, LA Review of Books, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. For the last three years, she served as the Director of the Watershed Reading Series with Art + Literature Laboratory. She is currently an instructor with Brooklyn Poets. Her chapbook Spells of Name was selected by Newfound for their Emerging Poets Series. She is at work on her debut full-length collection of poems.

 

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Big sallah, small sallah

Our eid celebrations unleashed things I grew to crave: happiness, ease, my parents’ attention and the ability to breathe—almost as though the surge in joyful emotions softened our often-stiff air, miraculously making it easier to take in. I needed more than anything to feel as air, both light and easily swayed, as I often felt as deeply rooted as century old trees. The change in atmosphere exaggerated how much of a shadow I was in my daily life. I only sparkled during Eid. My voice morphed into an entity of its own, I could feel a thrumming beneath my skin, an excitement in the way I walked, a hopefulness that this happiness might stay. My sibling and I fell into the habit of re-naming things, especially if we thought their names didn’t do their meanings enough justice. We decided for our Eid celebrations to be christened according to scale, which led to Big Sallah’s title being coined due to the extravagance it required; Small Sallah just required less. My family, along with my uncle’s and the other Muslim families, would litter our compound with rams when Big Sallah reared its costly head. I remember, one year, getting hurt by one of the rams I had befriended. I’d had an especially soft spot for this ram, but after that affair, I wanted so badly to taste it and revel in how good it tasted. 

Waking up to the smell of burning firewood on Eid morning was similar to drinking water after an indication of thirst. My mother would rush into our room, attempting to wake us while simultaneously checking things off in her head, my questions going unanswered because there was quite a lot to be done. My sibling and I would wake up excited, though tired from the previous night’s restlessness—sleep evading us due to our rollercoaster of emotions. We would carefully wear our newly-made lace over freshly done hair, slight headaches here and there until the tensions came undone. We would go into the compound-where the party was happening-in search of our dad, wait for his exclamations about how good we looked, try to get a glimpse of the food being cooked and rams being slaughtered. Sometimes there’s music going, money being gifted to children, people looking to buy more plastic chairs, cousins hoping to outdo the other, mothers and aunties setting up camp in kitchens as though Eid itself was war and not a celebration, drinks and the likes. The mosque affair mattered very little to me, I was particularly drawn to the ritual done before prayers. The necessity of water during this ritual provided a sense of calm, one whose root was severely unknown to me at the time. Washing my body with the intent to pray felt like heaven. I felt heaven reach out and attempt to smoothen my spikes, I knew this was not ordinary. I was not an especially religious child—I did not know any child who truly was—I had been injured quite early in life and began nurturing my anger from there on. But washing my body seemed to dull this anger. I would wash and feel rejuvenated, engaging a sense of calm with the ability to subdue a rupturing volcano. 

I was taught to rely solely on myself, which, I think, inspired my brand of rigidity. I relied on rigidity to keep me sane, to create a home far from risk, to keep its choking grip on my every step. In exchange for this, I promised to feed it bits of my soul, hoping to one day be consumed by it. In a funny way, I saw myself as Ariel giving her voice away to Ursula, rushing to give away parts of myself that scared me. This brand of rigidity manifested itself in every square-inch of my life, down to the unbreathable hold it had on my stomach. I did not allow myself explore my obvious queerness due to the same rigidity, I only allowed myself feel shame. I attached an ocean-load of shame to the essence of who I was, so frequently that breaking out of that mold cost me everything. Not until after this sharp realization did I consider the importance of community. Holding yourself when there is no longer a community to hold you? Incredibly heartbreaking does not begin to describe the smallest atom of such experience. I suppose that catalyzed the need for a greater power in my life. I had also begun asking myself shifting questions about the person I wanted to be, and the work it would require to protect myself from everything I did not. How I perceived love, the meaning of it, who I loved, why I loved them, what their love meant to me, how I received this love: was this how I wanted to receive love? Their love, in particular? The unnecessary reverence I regarded romantic love, and the roots of that. These shifting questions provided a foundation for even more shifting questions. Who my god is, signs they are my god, how I intend to pray to this god, how this god intends to converse with me, does this god love me? These are questions whose answers I am still collecting.

Beating myself into the path of kindness, especially after experiencing cruelty, has left bigger scars on my chest than the acts themselves. But if my orí strongly wants me on this path, who am I to deny my greatest self what it needs? To choose vulnerability, to want it so badly, even when impossible, even when the hurt feels so heavy my heart can’t function, even when I so badly want someone to feel a fraction of what I feel. Who else will show me tenderness? This world?

 

Aderinsola is a fiction/creative non-fiction writer who is fully immersed in a world of emotions.

 

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I Dreamt I Saw Two Black Girls Kissing in Church

& i heard a door inside my chest heave open 
it sounded like a storm returning 
to nurse green the dryness 
the drought had abandoned here 
& this is the kind of narrative we will not need 
to soften later 
& i guess it is easier to stay alive 
when you are not holding an accusation 
that always comes unbidden 
carrying erotemes that only crave answers 
of burning flesh 
& when you are free to swallow a mouthful 
of whomever your body takes home 
to go looking for something sweet 
and soft to sink your teeth into 
& not wake up with bruises 
where your name should be 
maybe this communion of ungendered bodies 
is what it means to say grace 
& this is something no baptism can free us from 
but the girls are worshipping each other’s hands 
they are going home and taking me with them 
& outside 
a statue of Jesus is holding out his arms

 

Precious Arinze is a Nigerian poet, essayist, and author of the chapbook The Hope of Floating Has Carried Us So Far, selected by Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes for the New-Generation African Poets Series (African Poetry Book Fund), 2021. Precious Arinze is a Poetry Editor for OlongoAfrica and a Poetry Reader at Up The Staircase Quarterly. Their works have appeared in Brittle Paper, Lolwe, Arts and Africa, Agbowo, The Republic Journal, Boston Review, Electric Literature, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Exposition Review, and Berlin Quarterly, among others. Author photo by Dandelion Eghosa.

 

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