in the streets of oshodi, some boys wrap themselves into a pipe, smoking themselves into the afterlife, they call it a poem they inherited from their mother’s tongue/ their father’s breast pocket. some, clasping themselves into the modesty of dying on the highway, dressed as scars un-wounding itself in them. some called it an after-party. i call it ‘yahooing’ lives into the palms of death. the one that carries the aftertaste of a boy’s bitter-sweet nightmare—visiting the flames from his father’s pipe. call it vain; how they steal the joy of homecoming from the lips of our ancestors, they set it as a blaze bearing the ashes of their own bodies & skin .
Tajudeen Muadh Akanbi is a poet from Osun State, Nigeria. His works have appeared or forthcoming on different literary magazines and journals such as African poetry magazine, world voices magazine, Kalahari review and elsewhere.
