AREMU ADAMS ADEBISI / 3 POEMS
in appraisal of eyes
here in africa, the perpetrators, when captured by the law, always confessed their deeds to eyes, invisible eyes trailing their destiny, clouding their sense of judgement. eyes autodidact in their wrongdoings, only defective when the eggshell is broken beyond repairs. the devil eye, the lone eye, the eye of darkness. eyes orchestrating a train of jinns in the dark silence. tarbayāeshu, qamtayāeshu, qamtatayāeshu — eyes of the spirits, eyes of bodies like glass, eyes speaking in incoherence. eyes shredding a lady’s cloth until they dump their woes in her womb. the eye of dirt is sickness, eye of lack of self-will is wrongdoing. eyes of a cat, of an owl. eyes of the wretched, changing form into a scrawny bird. my eyes, do not forsake me when the first light of sight goes straight into my socket. do not make me a casualty of my seeing, but a remedy in the lines and patterns of my visual poetry. my women, my women, do not turn my sight against them & I make out of their faces the unhyphenated sound of grief.
Death of Nursery Rhymes
For pupils in the building collapse
Lagos, Nigeria: gritted leaves
& flowers, flushed cakes
of rose dreams & orange hopes,
the body stains the fragrance
of sandalwood oil, arms fumble
below their heads in search
for shadows beneath the crust.
My tongue falls on a bitter
lisping, eating the salt of my skin.
Death, like a gun, shoots
without its consent, weighed
to dust with gifts. Flecked
mud on nursery grapes, flowers
melting against my lips,
birds fall off a great height
without looking. Lagos, Ìta Fàájì:
no more than blood thick enough
like syrup, & the pull of a child
shrunken to bones from too much,
wedged in the building blocks
AUBADE TO A BLACK BODY
You own your body by pulling your clothes off,
chaff separated from seeds in threshing grains.
You know how to doctor your shadows,
perform a hysterectomy for grief.
When light comes, your black skin is a model,
a hybrid contrivance for the new European Africa.
Moon, like your body, is light wrung out of darkness.
You read a book of one thousand and one hundred nights,
and got distracted by black slaves
portrayed as the greatest sins on Arab queens.
Your ancestors were bone and ash under a neon moon,
the etymology of modern cuffs and sirens.
You sculpture your body after dawn as an escape,
the farther away from light, the livelier your black body.
Light is night grieving over desertion facedown.
Light is a guisard in a cloak. Light is wrung from night.
Aremu Adams Adebisi is a North-Central Nigerian writer and economist. In 2019, he was nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, and the Fringe Play Festival, and his work was adapted into Lucent Dreaming's first theatrical performance in Wales. He has works published in Newfound Magazine, Lucky Jefferson, and elsewhere. He served as a mentor for SprinNG Fellowship and as a panelist for the Gloria Anzaldua Prize. He edits poetry for ARTmosterrific, facilitates Transcendence Poetry Masterclass, and curates the newsletter Poetry Weekly on Substack. He tweets as @AremuAdebisi_.