two poems by Adedayo Agarau
the boy’s body as an asylum party
& crossdressers have worn your mother’s kaba.
in this one, you are watching the morning
become fireflies growing out of ash clouds.
you think about dancing with the girls
but your body is tender spirit leaking into its grave
your father is in this poem as a wound in your leg
& he is why you cannot dance at parties
you are shaping time into memory
you are sifting names away, calibrating chaos as your body pleads
you are asking your reflection
what it means to be rainbow washed clean in salt water
to be ocean & embers of flames
riding your body with fingers all at once
to be a body the metaphor of rain
the way it trickles and trickles.
aunty shaggy asks me about asylum chapel
& i open my mouth to let memories flow
i grew up in a city squeezed out of war
mothers tending to their wounds beside
their sons’ graves pouring olive into their open bodies
in my case there is no father to go to the river with
little boys in sleeveless shirts mending buttons into their bellies
home burning ash & yellow flames the furnace of a lost love
found hanging between distance & water
in my case i am with my mother
her voice studded with stretch marks
lying loosely like the city’s map
in my case i made love to shadow
& moans coming with the waves
aching, aching frontward into depth carved in Alhaja’s chest
there are cities turned out of a country
& i am one of them
Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau is a human nutritionist, documentary photographer, and author of two chapbooks, For Boys Who Went & The Arrival of Rain. Adedayo was shortlisted for the Babishai Niwe Poetry Prize in 2018, Runner up of the Sehvage Poetry Prize, 2019. Adedayo is an Assistant Editor at Animal Heart Press, a Contributing Editor for Poetry at Barren Magazine and a Poetry reader at Feral. His works have appeared or are forthcoming on Mineral Lit, Glass, Jalada Africa,Linden Avenue, and elsewhere. Adedayo was said to have curated and edited the biggest poetry anthology by Nigerian poets, Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry. His chapbook, Origin of Names, was selected by Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes for New Generation African Poet (African Poetry Book Fund), 2020.