Mowing 
    for Dominion 

             Like a cricket scissors the night with its chirps,
I resume, chewing my fingernails like spear grass.

             Here, when the lawn is bald, rain cultivates
into a bad fruit. Once, I asked a goddess

             to water the wilting flowers in the garden of my heart
and she sent fire. My heart charred like burnt hay.

             Outside, in the Harmattan, a butterfly peels its colours
into a flower's gut. Its petals drink the butterfly's beauty.

             I listen to the wind's pulse and imitate its trembling—
the riot of dandelions snatched from their branches in a tempest.

             Like old trees, I watch the wind dance its stillness into
a thing bursting with life into me. I sit with my silence

             and we hold a conversation. Listening, too,
to the things speaking loudly without mouths.

             I fold the quiet into origami and let it fly.
The loneliness floats away from my hands.

 
Mouthful of Cinders

A father sweeps the ashes 
of his burnt daughter into his hands. 
Her body melts like ice in his eyes. 
Her skin, blackened like coal. 
We are plucked from our homes
before our tenderness ripens. 
The world, a cruel mother—
starves us of love and leaves us by the roadside 
to suffer the wrath of the inflamed weather. 
Ash-white; the air here
shrivels up everything beautiful and tender 
before its blooming. Tyre smoked, the aura of her innocence. 
The air holds her body like water—dissolving through. 
I, a wanderer from the chaos, 
watching from the luxury of a home. My face boils 
with tears. I pray to God for rain to wash the death, to cleanse 
this acrid grief, but not a spot fades into dust. 
Inside a minaret, while praying, I eavesdrop 
on a young boy as he recounts the rosaries on his takbir 
for the hundredth time, waiting, praying, wishing for it all 
to become history without memorabilia of scars. 
I cannot tell him this is how time wears us, like skin,
till our hopes age and wrinkle. Or how long
we must mourn so we can sing once again someday.

About the author:

Adesiyan Oluwapelumi, TPC XI, is a medical student, poet and essayist from Nigeria. He is the assistant editor of Fiery Scribe Review. He is the winner of the Team Booktu Poetry Contest (2024), Cheshire White Ribbon Day Contest (2022), NiMasa Cancer Awareness Poetry Contest (2024), and Konya Shamsrumi Poetry Contest (2024). His works are featured/ forthcoming in 20.35, Fantasy Magazine, Brittle Paper, Poet Lore, Tab Journal, Poetry Wales, Variant Literature, and elsewhere. He is an Adroit Journal Summer Mentee and SprinNG Writers’ Fellow and his works were selected for inclusion in the Annual Outstanding Young Writers Anthology (Paper Crane, 2023). He tweets @ademindpoems

Feature image by Jon Eric Marababol on Unsplash