Issue 112

For me, the restlessness leads to the next poem.

I dream myself the boy thrown
from the Jeep again: face, burlap

to hide what the boys made
with their fists.

A friend reminded me recently of joy—
my joy. My laugh, infectious, she said.

The hope is that by having attended to poets’ work wholeheartedly, we will come to see the world and those who move within it a little more clearly, so that we may love it, and one another, a little better and put that love into action.

Even a book is simple in this folded
World. Though my throne is hidden, the horn-shaped moon

somewhere someone is dying you remember but
see the ache and its grace in frantic flight

I believe there is no such thing as a healthy individual without community or culture, and no such thing as a healthy community or culture without ritual.

You think it’s enough to wait all morning
for snow that never comes while up
in the atmosphere flakes drift for hours

without touching the ground.

I’ve been struck by the immense beauty in the communities I have been a part of, both in Nigeria and now in Canada, as well as grieved by the levels of hardship. The motif of the garden, which I explore in my work, has become a place for me to sit with this contradiction.