Poetry Corner
The one leaf on the floor
Demilade Akinleye
The orange tinted leaf lies lifeless
On the floor that birthed it
Stem since detached, its corpse blends
With the wood surface that bathed it in sunlight
Having once reached heights beyond
the wind would ever take it,
The late maple now lies still
It’s a sequence
Our stem anchors us and their roots anchors them
We live in a constant state of dependency
Until the day we reunite with our
Providers where we’d all coalesce
To nourish those yet to come
Every process has its role
Yet it is what goes unrecognized
That makes everything so…
Beautiful
Alkebulan
Joy Pius
The pale faces will tell you Alkebulan does not exist. It is a myth, an accessory for their fairytales, Wakanda they call it.
I am the descendant of Alkebulan. I have seen her; I have touched her. She is more than a place, she is a spirit, a mindset, a Goddess.
Yeye ndiye kila kitu ambacho ni na hakitakuwa tena – she is everything that is and no longer will be. Yeye ndiye kila kitu ambacho bado hakija na bado hakijafanyika – she is everything that isn’t yet and is yet to be.
There the river speaks to the sun and the response is rain. The wind is the guiding voices of the ancestors. The tallest tree bows to lightning and the sound of Thunder brings hope. It is a land of green pastures, with mountains and valleys, waterfalls, and streams. Its vegetation is best compared to that of the garden of Eden.
Her people are royalty, god like beings. Their skin radiates gold. Their clothing made of red corals. They talk using drums, da-dum-da-dum. They dance for the rain and sing for the sun. They speak their mother’s tongue.
Alkebulan. Or as the white man has taught you Africa.
Postiche Icons
Ayomide Bayowa
My family portrait is likely jail. The first time the
household’s back wall settled, there were gutturals,
tacit gunshots & broken dances. Back from school in
a pinafore pickle, homekept in a dust haunt, unable to
pinpoint my shadow. The dining’s family-sized white
masque peeps the wardrobe of robes. In this, Grandma
insisted the photographer have a copy of his likeness
unlike his miserable peers before departing abruptly
with his brown locket. At every flash, I was the tiniest
missing detail in the mandatory, like an empty shawl
shrug, leaking breast milk, two left-footed shoes,
uneven shirt buttons, unbuckled disciple. Alike not
being visitors’ greatest host. In finger food snickers at
our albums, swearing that I have just the gloomy eyes
with a nation that seeks sun in a sulky forest in them. I ask, ‘why not take me with you?
Or maybe, when you come again.’
