African Poets

December 6, 2019

“What Makes a Saint a Saint?” by Trust TonjiPosted by

Trust Tonji

WHAT MAKES A SAINT A SAINT?

don’t you think it is bad 
how I wake up
craving my phone
with thoughts of my lover
before longing to pray to God
in hushed tones
careful to not disturb his morning peace?
or well, how would I even know if
our time zone isn’t different anyway

when you were younger
did you, too, imagine
angels winged like eagles flanking God,
fanning him with palm fronds, saying
holy, holy, holy, with the perfect precision
that this ignorance can’t comprehend?

here the mouth is scissors
tearing the air with swear words

shit, agriculturists concur,
is not just waste or disgusting
as your swears make it seem
they know how much food
it can help yield, if used as manure

—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019
Tribute to African Poets

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Trust Tonji: “It has not been easy to be two incomplete halves as a result of being the product of lovers of different nationalities. Father is Beninese; mother is Nigerian: the incomplete cultural immersion that comes with it, the linguistic difference, and every other byproduct that sprouts from love’s lack of foresight. Writing my stories in poetry and trying to get them out into the world is my way of seeking inner peace and escaping a throwing of tantrums that could have been otherwise manifested through uncivilized outbursts of emotions.” (web)

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December 4, 2019

“I Fell in Love with an Historian Once” by Charika SwanepoelPosted by

Charika Swanepoel

I FELL IN LOVE WITH AN HISTORIAN ONCE

I fell in love with an historian once.
It made sense on paper.
But we all know what history does to paper.

High as a kite on all kinds of solitude,
I once fell in love with an historian.
I was looking for a way back.

He asked me once,
only half in love:
“A way back from?”

—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019
Tribute to African Poets

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Charika Swanepoel: “I am a South African poet and literary scholar currently finalizing my MA in English poetry at the North-West University. I write poetry because I strongly believe that anyone with the creative need cannot afford not to write. I believe the creative word is not only a way of expressing your own personhood, but that it also provides us with an organic means of communication. I sometimes write as a way of talking to myself, to my people, to the universe.” (web)

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December 2, 2019

“Finally, My Grandfather Undid Darkness” by Olajide SalawuPosted by

Olajide Salawu

FINALLY, MY GRANDFATHER UNDID DARKNESS

To fritter loneliness, my grandfather chews his sticks of cigarettes
and finds company among the boulders at our veranda,
hitting them with his walking stick to punctuate his anger. 
Everyone has left him except the rocks and his Kadio radio,
which often reels out white noises and Afghan bombs.

He soon learned geography without an eye; 
and told me we need inner eye more to walk the atlas of life,
and for centuries the sockets have remained homes of human misery. 
Each night he would gamble his way through the rocks
and sit on his rocking chair facing the moon.  

My grandfather soon learned the divinity of darkness
because grief is sometimes painted with light. Today
he is breaking the day with his fingers and has locked
his ears within the walls. Like all blind, 
my grandfather does not need an eye to know that it is you.

—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019
Tribute to African Poets

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Olajide Salawu: “I want my verse to document human anguish in all forms. Likewise, I like my imagery to talk about love. Finally, I like bitter metaphors that speak against any forms of human oppression.”

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November 29, 2019

“Afternoon” by Chidinma OpaigbeoguPosted by

Chidinma Opaigbeogu

AFTERNOON

Early morning brings the sounds of children sweeping front yards, 
water sloshing in clay pots held high on bald patches of heads,
women cooking porridge in the town square, 
the sound of gunfire.

Afternoon is my favorite time;
we children run out in our underwear,
dust sticks to our bare chests with sweat
as we kick our patched-up ball between splintered posts older than I am.
The sounds of small feet pounding dry ground signals the end of the game 
because everyone knows what time dinner is.

Evening brings competition: 
my seven siblings crowd the pot of quickly cooling soup,
sticky balls of pounded yam become glue in their hands 
as they wait their turn. I scrape what’s left.

When everyone’s bellies are full we retire to our sleeping mats.
Safely nestled in my own mat, sandwiched between my younger siblings, 
I look at my feet through the holes in my blanket. 
Parts of my toes have gotten lighter, and I am so excited. 
Wait until Mama hears I’m turning white!
Maybe when I’m completely white 
we could get good blankets, ones that aren’t so cold. 

The darkness closes me in, but doesn’t settle.
Night tosses and turns, 
its silence is berated with artillery. I hate the night.
I want it to be the afternoon. 
If it was the afternoon I could play soccer with my friends, 
and catch aku with my net after the rain,
and play as long as I want. And Mama wouldn’t say a thing about it 
because everyone’s happy in the afternoon. 

—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019
Tribute to African Poets

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Chidinma Opaigbeogu: “I started writing poetry when I was twelve years old as a way of connecting with the world around me. Over time, my work has evolved and has become more of an exploration of myself. As a Nigerian-American, it was often hard for me to define myself. I felt too Nigerian to be fully American, and not Nigerian enough to claim my heritage. This conflict within me has strengthened my desire to know more about the country my family comes from and has spurred the writing of poetry that explores key events and experiences such as the Biafra War and the rich food culture in Nigeria. I hope to continue to use poetry as a tool to explore culture and identity and to find others who may have felt that same confusion as I.”

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November 27, 2019

“Slut” by Ukamaka OlisakwePosted by

Ukamaka Olisakwe

SLUT

i
Grandmother said there is a slut trapped in every woman, a wild taboo that must never be set free.

So mother dipped her fingers in a tub of pomade, and massaged her daughter’s clitoris until the puny thing grew thinner and disappeared into the fold of skin.

ii
Ugwu nwanyi bu di ya. Imekwa enu, mee ani, ugwu nwanyi bu di ya. 

She packed up her books, took his name, and became dignified.

iii
Perhaps in the next life, she will come as a man. Perhaps she should make the best of this body. So she made her husband a pot of soup and prepared a table for him to eat. She laid back and watched him eat. 

And though his face was riddled with pleasure, she did not know the taste of her own food.

iv
I stood under a shower, my breasts drooping closer to my stomach, and I thought: oh, you sad things! It’s too early to fall asleep.

v
There was a masseuse who lived down the street. Her fingers were sleek and long, body thin and shapely. 

One day, I stretched on the bed and let her hands work my nerves, her fingers easing my knotted tension. 

My slut stirred, and I bit my tongue until I tasted my own blood.

vi
Tell me how to make you happy, he said. Here, take my hands, speak with them.

I don’t know what happy is, I said. What does it taste like?

Like the guavas after the rains had washed the trees of Harmattan dust, or the onugbu soup after mama had added the dollops of ogiri?

vii
Did I tell you about the girl who took a hammer to my slut’s cage and caused everything to fall apart? 

Sex had always been a ceremony for man’s orgasm. My hands were just tools to stir my husband’s eagerness, my body his to devour. He would hover above me, face stretched in taut lines, sweat breaking from the sides of his face. And I would think, oh, how beautiful it is for this giant to quiver above me like the okra branch in the winds. And when he collapsed on my chest, I would hold him and think, I had fulfilled my purpose. ’Cos what else was the purpose of the woman than to keep her man satiated?

Until Nneka. Wild one, with a body that tapered like a Coke bottle and limbs that stretched from heaven to earth. Nneka, with a mouth that spat words like hot corns, her head filled with sin. She gazed at my cage, shook her head at my slut and said, “Chai, who did this to you?”

Then she picked at my locks, tantric fingers exposing the other way of freedom, and I have never been the same again.

viii
Grandmother looked at daughter and said, “This one is spoiled.”

Mother shook her head and said, “Her chi succumbed to slumber and this happened.”

Daughter strutted away. A proud slut.

ix
My husband used to joke about how docile I was before I joined the choir. One day, he paused between thrusts to trap my moans with the flat of his palm.

“Who are you?” he asked. “I have never seen you like this before.”

I bit his hand, threw my head back, forced him down and he disappeared in between my thighs.

He has yet to emerge ever since.

—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019
Tribute to African Poets

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Ukamaka Olisakwe: “I was born in Kano, Nigeria, and am currently an MFA candidate at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. I write poetry because it’s the only language the girl I carry inside speaks.” (web)

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November 25, 2019

“Birthing” by Chisom OkaforPosted by

Chisom Okafor

BIRTHING

In memory of Akin, beaten to death on the 17th of February, 2017, for being homosexual

Someday, a soul will come out of the field to claim it
and then, we will know.
—Kwame Dawes

i.
Here, seven nautical miles away, we let our canoe
trail the direction of wind. 
Here, where all things take their roots and a symphony still remains
of the water creatures below, like colours strewn on palettes, 
we’re pilgrims advancing by sight (and sound),
willing this cathedral of our bodies to find home again, 
within the glassy shimmer of water.

 

 

ii.
When my companion casts his net, 
I see the hands of a javelin thrower, and
I want those hands in exchange for mine.
To hold and be held like mine, at nights when rain clouds gather, 
and I’m looking up at the stars and not finding them there.
But there is no hidden starlit constellation overhead now, 
not even deep into nightfall yet,
and we’re rowing to the shacks on the other side,
lined up on dry land in a solemn procession,
and we’re pitched on both ends of this canoe, paddling away 
past boat parts in disuse, past tired retreating fishermen, 
past floating fish traps to dry land
where there are bamboo pillars, straight as soldiers on parade,
ready for the mating call of a whistling thrush hoisted onto a dais
on the riverbank. 

 

iii.
My lover swears he could trace the scape of the highland 
far into the village beyond, from this distance; 
the ridges stretching so thin that they disappear into the sunset.
There is a serenity in water that builds nests in my head,
shatters only when he grips his paddle again
for one more stroke like the swing of a broken racket, 
before we let us drift downstream with the tide.
They can’t follow us to this place, he tells me.
You can’t lynch who you don’t see.
Consider that all waters spring from an unseen circuit.
That love is water, which means that mine is a summation 
of thick droplets that heralds a rainstorm.
That love smells like loam washed clean at sunrise 
by liquid, ordinary as rain. 
That love is sunrise, 
which means that mine is the petals of a freshly watered rose 
blooming in the sun.
That love is a flowing stream.
That here, on this body of water is where lovers—
boys left for dead by the wayside—
find their names again.

—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019
Tribute to African Poets

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Chisom Okafor: “I was born in Nigeria and still live in Nigeria. The themes of sexuality, history, my own childhood and family bonds (especially in dysfunctional families) influence my writing. I also write as a way of conversing with myself and finding a way to document my own memories.” (web)

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November 22, 2019

“Don’t You Go” by Anointing ObuhPosted by

Anointing Obuh

DON’T YOU GO

My mother is a tree, dried up by the Harmattan wind 
that blows through our family.
She sways, making the dust leap into the air like dancing figurines,
angels drunk on the praises of men.
As I dance, she reaches out to steady me.
Freyah, don’t go slipping on your tongue.
Don’t ask why father won’t come out to play.
What is an only child lying on the altar, 
burnt over with years of sacrifice, saying I do?
Who will hear words when they take up wings 
singing away their meanings?
My mother is the tree of life, 
I taste my destiny in her and know I will be fruitful.
As I dance, I feel my roots reaching out to steady me.
I hear those birds in my head singing, I do, I do.
I see him not come out to play. I see me. 
I’m blind. I can no longer see my mother.
I am the tree, I am the collector of dust.

—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019
Tribute to African Poets

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Anointing Obuh: “Growing up in Africa puts you in the race for self-identity and self-fulfillment. I do not know what I was before I started writing. However, there is so much of reality, so much to write about. I see/feel Africa as a world of shapes and sounds, all trying to stand alone but constantly jamming into each other. So when I write as an African poet I am struggling with the quest for independence, continuously resisting being jammed together with those who have come before me and those who are yet to come. Even as Africa is a world cloaked with diverse narratives, you find there are two sides to its tales: the Speakable and the Unspeakable things. I have taken the job both as an African writer, and as a person, to tell those Unspeakable stories and tell them with fearless dexterity.”

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