MEDLEY OF VOICES

[door...

     the inner chamber of darkness out-coats.

Hear!

   whatever calls your ears to a conference has tales to whisper. the night sky reverberate as rain splatter in songs & 
​boys recall rain lullabies with their legs & tenors:

"the night lamp says; don't get lost, daybreak is on a journey."

before this water language are sweat chants & long drools of handkerchiefs.

Later!

a street walks into another street—flood & girls plait lines of nature's chemistry into verses.

Hear!
conscience remains in the custody of one who wants it.
whatever ate light yesterday is craves for more. 
silent things thunders more languages; than the broken quivers of thousand lips.


​closes]







 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
INEBRIATED WITH ANTIPHONS

everything i say:
 
say "cascade"

my body is a fissure

[cascade]

light leaks from there 

[cascade]

raged eyes squint at its wreckage

[cascade]

because their shadows scare them

[cascade]

truth pelts with sleek whips

[cascade]

lie runs naked on the street

[cascade]

everything i say

say "cascade."



 
 
 
 
 
 


A DROWNING ROOM
 
in the tongue of a sadist-
lash your happiness 
or pulsate your words in arrhythmia

the world is a grief-village & you must shell.
someone said, if you want to know how far a ferried soul-
has gone, light a candle, place it under your scrotum.
 
in this drowning room, grief is a girl seeking paradise in mutiny.
there is something about having a conquering spirit-
yet, use it to plunge into skirts [a kind of bland heroism]
on the altar of bile pleasure
leaving behind a pastureland of gory tales.
 
the cheetah's feet is not a testament of strength-
if the cheetah's feet plunges into this poem at the sight of a leopard
it is not an assurance of safety
like the cheetah, the drowning room is also in flight.

this story is about girls crawling into shells
after their roofs are plundered.
everyone has a right to wear their skin and keep-
whatever is in their body
[not in this land]
where proximity is a visa for plunging & plundering.

& here lies the verdict:
we must make rafters to ferry our drowning rooms-
out of floods or lose cornerstones.
these rooms must speak, they must out-shell.
they must combat, they must incarcerate-
a silence that exterminate isn't golden-
it is brusque.

Ojo Olumide Emmanuel is a Nigerian Poet and Book Editor. He is the Author of the Poetry Chapbook “Supplication For Years in Sands” (Polarsphere Books, 2021). His works have appeared and forthcoming at Feral, Quills, Melbourne-Culture,TNR and elsewhere. He currently curates the monthly Wakasoprize for Poetry and Abubakar Gimba Prize for Short Fiction. He is a fellow of SprinNG Writers Fellowship. Say hi to him on Twitter @OjoOlumideEmma2