Drummers in a Storm and other Poems

IN ANOTHER WORLD

Rasaq Malik

In another world I want to be a father without

passing through the eternal insanity of mourning

my children, without experiencing the ritual

of watching my children return home as bodies

folded like a prayer mat, without spending my

nights telling them the stories of a hometown

where natives become aliens searching for

a shelter. I want my children to spread a mat

outside my house and play without the walls

of houses ripped by rifles. I want to watch my children

grow to recite the name of their homeland like Lord’s

Prayer, to frolic in the streets without being hunted like

animals in the bush, without being mobbed to death.

In another world I want my children to tame grasshoppers

in the field, to play with their dolls in the living room,

to inhale the fragrance of flowers waving as wind blows,

to see the birds measure the sky with their wings.

Rasaq Malik is a graduate of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals, including Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Spillway, Rattle, Junked, Connotation Press, HEArt Online, Grey Sparrow, Jalada, and elsewhere. He is a two-time nominee for Best of the Net. He has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and was shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2017.

THERE IT GOES

MAPENZI SI SHURUA, HUJA YAKAJA

Alexis Teyie

The night you leave, the sky breaks out

in stars. They burn like open sores.

The acacia, scarred from private wars,

still has leaves.

I am not radical in my sorrow.

What has come before,

that which has been handed down—

these are my only methods.

I feel what I feel should be felt.

I say nothing new, nothing different.

My concerns are as they were before:

is the tea too cold to drink?

Alexis Teyie is a Kenyan writer and feminist. Her poetry is included in the Jalada Afrofuture(s) and Language issues, and Black Girl Seeks. Her short fiction is published in Short Day Africa’s Water and GALA’s Queer Africa II. She has also appeared in Omenana, Q-zine, This is Africa, Writivism, African Feminist Forum, Anathema: Spec from the Margins, and HOLAA’s safe sex manual. Teyie recently coauthored a children’s book, Shortcut. She currently works in development, and is a poetry editor with Enkare Review.

Drummers in a Storm

Rolawe D.F

Poor souls,
Fighting glitches
In forgotten corners,
Where the cigarette burns out—
Factotums.

Rolawe D.F is an a Nigerian Poet who prefers to be anonymous and known for his short,incisive poems.