I sat at the feast of kings,And saw a goat wearing the crown!The loudest drunkard in the clanNow called “Your Excellency!”His breath stinks of liquor and lies,Yet chiefs bow before him! He who once sold fake fertilizers,Now chairs the Committee on Agriculture!And the woman who forged her school certificateShe now signs off on education budgets!Ha ha ha!When did pigs…
The man with a dove in his chestwalks softly through the village breezebut in his compound,his wife tears thunder from cotton clouds,cooks insults in the pot of peace,and scolds the mortar for being quiet. He offers laughter,she stirs storms.He plants kindness,she harvests thorns.And the town calls him “weak”as termites eat his roofwhile he prays for rain. But the man…
He rose,without the gilded luck of throne-born sons,but with the raw hunger of a man who knewthe iron tang of turned soil.His fingers carved roads from gravel and ghost,watched the land kneel—an old houndlicking its master’s palm.He shouldered mountains,their roots snarling at his feet,and with each cracked nail,he wrote the futurein a languageonly storms could speak. Forward!He moved like…
IIn the house of sighs, she lit the wick—moon-eyed, hush-hymned,cloaked in crêpe of cope(a shroud she stitched herself).A bonfire of silk apologies,kindled by her matchstick sorrow. When the roof spat soot and grief,she danced among ashes—chanting trauma-trauma like tambourine,a dirge of didn’t-mean-to—while the neighbors wept in buckets,their tears slick fuel for her next performance. IISaid she:“I suffer from kaleidopsyche,the…
By Ebhohon Majekodunmi Oseriemen They promised us light—a golden sun in every socket,a thousand pixel moons cupped in our palms.No more shadows, they swore,no more cracks for grief to hide.We clapped. We swiped. We danced.Drunk on the buzz of a futuretoo bright to see. Now—where does a widow’s tear spillwithout a hashtag sipping its salt?Where can a man cradle…
The land is a market, but who owns the stall? The traders have vanished, but the thieves stand tall. They sell the rain, they sell the road, they sell the trees where ancestors strode. They sell the fire, they sell the clay, they sell the dawn before it turns to day. And the young? They flee like startled birds,…
(for the city that devours its own) In the court of the one-eyed king, the scribes bend their spines like wilted reeds, etching lies in the wind. Who will count the stolen moons? Who will measure the grain of the enpoored spilled beneath gold-tipped boots? The horn is cracked, the drum chokes on silence, and the river no longer…
They stand at the grave, these men with fat stomachs, these men who once spat on his name, now singing praises with trembling lips! They beat the drums—boom, boom, boom— calling him the great one, the one who walked with the ancestors, the one who never stumbled! Oh, my people! Where was this greatness when he walked barefoot in…
And the gong beats thrice, for the one who walks beyond the river. Once, he was shadow, Once, he was storm— but now, a hymn in the mouth of mourners, a carved mask of old proverbs. The scribes gather at the crossroads, sifting dust, refining echoes, the past laid out like palm fronds, stripped of the wormwood and the…
My guy wey wear khaki, stand for gate, He dey shout “Papers! Papers! No duplicate!” E eye sharp like eagle, e face hard like rock, But for back, my guy, dey break the lock. E be immigration, na him gangan be the law, Yet e hand long, e dey do fire war. Two opposites, e nor suppose blend, But…
What happens when you challenge the establishment?…
The Great Delusion invites you into a…
—for Professor Alofoje Unuigboje— by Majekodunmi Oseriemen…
By Majekodunmi Oseriemen Ebhohon They say the…
