Poetry by Adedayo Agarau
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A Poetry Cover Of Ọ̀run n Móoru in which The Sky Bleeds into My mother’s Hands
after brymo olawale’s Ọ̀run n Móoru & the trees shake. girls hold their mothers but my sister holds me. a house on fire is a woman’s bags thrown through the window. & what do you think of the Lord’s wrath on the children of Sodom? my mother, a daughter of cactus from the lineage of the never-breakthrough— nebuchadnezzar’s dream cut by half, hung over my grandfather’s head. in this poem, i am not a good son, our house singing the way a country is smeared by fire. what is in a name, oh, the way it haunts the carrier like ojuju, what is in a name, oh, the way it undresses wounds with iodine? the Lord’s anger wears a new dress, my father’s buba is mine tonight. my tongue tingling new names out of old books. the king of kings is also the son of man, & in my mother’s prayer, the barren land protest in silence. when a saviour is chased out, what shall be left of nazareth—egypt, famine, children sliding out of life through their noses. what shall be left of the synagogue where jesus read his first scriptures. my father’s tongue splotching the truth out of my mother’s mouth. the first sex on their love bed shook the earth & i came out of that dilapidated house, & by this i mean the lord shall take back canaan. i mean the captives are singing of revolution but the lord is tendering gun wounds. we walk out in the sun, & the street sees our naked grief blossoming like a field of green—my mother & i. |
Photograph by Dirk Skiba
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Adedayo Agarau’s chapbook, Origin of Names, was selected by Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes for New Generation African Poet (African Poetry Book Fund), 2020. He is a human nutritionist, documentary photographer, and author of two chapbooks, For Boys Who Went and 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 Glass Poetry, Mineral Lit, Ice Floe, Ghost City, Temz, Linden Avenue, Headway Lit, The Shore Poetry, Giallo and elsewhere. Adedayo was said to have curated and edited the biggest poetry anthology by Nigerian poets, Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry. You can find him on Twitter @adedayo_agarau or agarauadedayo.com.
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