Grey; Self-portrait of dusk as shrouded corpses – Two Poems By Nigerian Writer Fatihah Quadri Eniola

Grey.

After Abu Bakr Sadiq’s “Wormhole”

the anxiety dropping in snowflake selects new songs from a playlist of threnodies. this way —my maternal niece, a bondmaid who gave birth to her mistress staggers into my grandmother’s 60th consummation party. on the trundle, grandmother scurries down the mood, her kisses build into my mother’s body.

this way —there is a famous bartender in my mother’s body, she brewed a nice mead for Mexico’s guest before summer bleach colors. my grandmother is a teacher, this way —I ate up an aptitude test, my exclamation floated into a hfuear spy & the brain-hunters came running, by-passing mountains, eating into lands for my reasoning-powder.

this way —presence is the mirror that beats us into future, time telescopes, my Arabian mug is filled with white herbs, I want a sip, I want to feel my body sink into the past as I walk the aisle into the wind lodging in my father’s father ribcage. this way —I watched my grandmother spit my body out her womb with pebbles of moans in a recovery room at Mexico.

It’s still summer, though, time telescopes, my head is a host of tiny worries, a bird will tweet your name on a burning sky.  my mother is always sex-caned, she bought brown wraps for a cocaine party, last night was a high floor, my mother danced shame like tipsiness till a native man mis-fell into her body & gravity found home. this way — her tongue became a rebel to language. she wandered into Mars, killed lizards —took her heart for another pandowdy.

Self-portrait of dusk as shrouded corpses

a sequence of soft

lightening pelts down

the silence of a man staggering

down the route of death. earth is a

dying song, the

land, lush —trees growing from skeletons of

dead men, & we are crying because we are sucking

from our ancestors’ bodies.