Photo Credit: Etsy.com Mercy, mercy after Michael Imossan Somewhere in Ikorodu, violence is loosening its fists, thawing like ice in the chest of a tout. he drowns a bus driver in baptismal curses with names of different gods. a market woman spits on a customer shaving prices like hair down to the scalp. meaning slips […]
Photo Credit: Unsplash Eden 2047 After Annihilation 2018 / After Ifeoluwa / After Emmanuel Umeji’s Eden, 2052 your name remains bulleted in the journal you gifted me on my birthday. there are extra bullets in all the places you marked ghosts, for haunting. think, Obiajulu. see the terracotta streets through which we walk into infinity and
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Photo Credit: Dreamstime The Distance of Water The first time Lamide heard the Lagos lagoon breathe, she imagined it was whispering a name she had spent three years avoiding. “Felix,” it sighed, or maybe she only heard what she wished. The wind tasted of salt, diesel, and roasted corn from the road. Fishermen hauled their
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Photo Credit: Etsy.com Something crimson, Something soft You pedal me out of this noisy universe; you take me to a place of crimson silence, where nothing fades, where nothing dies. You teach me how to move with the wind, how to fly, seamlessly— fluffy as troubleless feathers. I have learnt to depart this world through silence, and return as though I never left. I am cradling our love because it is what I think I deserve. Contributor’s Bio Olobo Ejile, a Nigerian poet, writer, and researcher. He is a member of the Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation, Lagos Chapter. He volunteers as an assistant poetry editor for Table Feasting Magazine. He is a fellow of the 2025 Idembeka Creative Writing Workshop and the Global Arts in Medicine Fellowship; longlisted for both Wale Okediran Poetry Prize and Octofest Anthologies 1.0. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in ANA Review 2024, Fiction Niche, Shallow Tales Review, Artisans Quill, EOPP Anthology 2025, Indy Press, Cọ́n-scìò Magazine, and elsewhere. Connect with him on X @Olobo_Ejile.
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Photo Credit: Pinterest.com Obsidian Psalms of the Lost Voice There is a silence into which the world cannot intrude —Rumi darkness, you see, is a lost nuance at night, in deep shadows, you spot ancient edicts, a voice, a lost voice calls out, whirring and faithless, beyond clicking Hades’ gate, but the voice comes no closer, you
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Photocredit: Pexels.com Needling The leaves move to an amapiano breathed by God. But later they will be bedridden— like this mind, gulping pain like burnt prayers. I call it living, tracing life between paper edges — afrobeats needling into me at dawn to erythroid memories. I’m a lover who hennaed my beliefs on
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Photo Credit: Freepik.com Someday, You’ll Learn to Love Yourself Like God Does You’ll learn to hug the person you see when you look into the mirror. Yeah, that same boy shuffled into bokeh in group photos, the one sent miles away not to photobomb personal pictures, the one cameras flee from. Perhaps you will learn
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Photo Credit: Freepik.com Midnight Is The Carnival Of A Dead Man Until G-boy pleaded with Kpakogi to help him with an urgent task, Kpakogi had been a menial labourer in Bacita. He loaded sacks of grain for traders with his wheelbarrow on market days and earned a living. He also worked as a bricklayer, packing
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Photo Credit: Freepik.com A Loving Father Just as it is written; Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated — Romans 9:13 (NIV) I would not blame Cain. If my toes slid into his boots, I’d steal Abel’s breath too. What do you call a man who loves one child & hates the other—God?
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Photo Credit: Pikwizard A Photograph of You There is a photograph of you holding your love, a newly washed white fabric up close to yourself in the heat of a Sunday that had just stretched its legs towards your nose. The sun, tasting yellow as the morning Pa said his last prayer, holding our hands but letting go of breath. You loved to paint, said it was the beauty the world needed. I imagine that when you left, you must have painted the journey blue while giving the wind a taste of your voice. Every morning, I spread our memories before the face of heaven, letting them wear its reflection. The grass begins to burn into glass, and I remember how much you admired crystals, with their ability to bend light. You said you wished to be like this, bending pulchritude into transparency, knowing how easy it is to break. but what is
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