(cover photograph direction: Tobi Amida)
Bullet
/ˈbʊl.ɪt/
––noun
- A ball of lead or other metal, used in firearms of small calibre; now often conical.
- Typography. A printed symbol in the form of a round dot for marking items in a list
is that metal ball that loves to kiss a body on reaching it.
Strange how a noun could love everything that shares
the same beginning consonant with it. In a bullet race, a body
is a target if it has blood. Sharp & ruthless— you won’t see it
coming. Guess a bullet would work as well as a knife.
In Kubwa, a discovery: a cannonball with my name on it.
The night news announces another found in Mararaba,
carrying a double inscription: ìkú rẹ, ìbùkún—
the Yoruba equivalent of your death, Blessing— most likely
a message from death to me. [But it reached me maimed]
What better way to offer grief as a caramel chocolate if not this way?
Box it. Label it sweet— should the name be as long as the trial?
I do not know. I am only aware of names that begin with /b/
& they’re not blessings. In a diacritical shift, an inscription could
also be a messiah. Imagine that we’re at a train station. & a man
screams ìkú re. I race away from what pulls my tongue for a taste.
Perhaps we should not have been there. One foot on the deadland
& the other flipping the scripture backward for eternity. I forgot
to mention that sometimes ago, I shielded a school boy from a shrapnel.
My palm, a hollowed home. You & I, residents in it. As you sing
along the street where a signboard reeks of blood, & pointing a finger
to the fate of men, to the graveyard that’d claim our silence someday,
remember there are unwon battles. & have you noticed that kinetics
must reach a halt heart to cool a body? Alone, after a sabbath service,
a clergy writes a number of things that could close him—a chapter
of history book written in falsehood. There’s no bullet in it. As far as
I’m concerned, in the vein of life, I’m a century away from my end point.
But I have bulleted myself for the bullet that’d walk through me someday.
Glossary: ìkú re: here is death
Pandemic
*Ọfọn ye mmọ eke akan̄kan̄ owotde akan mmọ eke akan̄ owotde.
At least you’d see the knife briefly, or the assailant. Blood
on the floor picturesque of the lamb’s blood tickling the stake.
Yours wouldn’t save this land, but it’d bear witness to the slaughter.
Bear me witness, O history, that I write to proclaim hunger
a pandemic in my realm. Here, every thoroughfare holds boys
whose assets are plates––& some, homeless. I see them under
flyovers on workout mornings. Today, the face I saw conflates
with the voice I heard in my sleep. It belonged to a man confessing:
for two weeks now, this mouth of mine, this estuary of praise has not tasted food.
Sorry–– I––this plague partaker–– a skeleton contesting for ugly pageant
can’t stop thinking about the time when inflation was a jargon in playing times,
air making its way into a balloon. I herd my sadness in an angora,
boil my temper & oil it for breakfast. Can’t you hear me munching words?
Can’t you hear us on this end denying our desire of royalty?
Look at us–– those enduring times of steel, bendable by the desire to live,
those who would waste away, who are pierced through by hunger.
In this poem, I’m merely meditating on the monstrous properties of lack.
Meanwhile, from here, you’d know the basis of our aches, our lamentations.
You’d see the infirmary––its wards all filled with people awaiting prescriptions.
*Those slain with the sword are better off than those slain by famine.
