theshallowtalesreview

coffin is the wife     of grave we met ours under the siege     of darkness.   youth is a crime in my country. youth is the bride     of dust.   Lagos…

i know your pains — cloaked and costumed in capsules of electronic smiles. if the make-up of our minds was plastic, you’d have broken into Warsaw pieces. & if our…

a child must know what comes after a hard glare from his mother; one that becomes a brittle smile the very next second, a flicker that goes unnoticed, like NEPA…

A Circus   This is for the politicians, for the clamping of a mouth, for every pocket hoarding notes, for worn-out promises, for collateral damage, for those eyes refusing sight,…

A Requiem for Bodies Reduced to Little Things   Playing aloud the song by Bob Nesta Marley Blending hope out of Babylon — as his voice punching the peak of…

a poem in which i’m everything that calls you   (after Boloere Seibidor’s Rebirth) the lecturer ambles into the classroom like an elephant & my shoulder sinks in anger. why…

Elegy For a Brother Who Looks Like the Man in the Mirror   “Hell is a fabricated figment of imagination” — J. Cole   i said this prayer every time…