Portent

They smeared a widowed cockerel's blood at the end of the street.
They buried a goat’s placenta by the small gate erected by the small pool
linking our street with the NTC road and Liberty Stadium. Decked
in white & the glory of cowries, eyes bloodshot as their tongues rolled
in incantations, the priests walked with measured gait down the street. A small
boy carried a calabash containing three wraps of molded cornmeal, a smear of palm-oil
& seven bean cakes. The priests swore blood was an antidote to disappearance. 
Spat gin on walls & told us to go to bed. What we learned regarding rituals is that blood
is thicker than blood. That night, gunshots spoiled the night with fear. Birds the next
morning cried like wolves, like the woman whose children were shot in their sleep.


 
Arrival                                                                       
 
in the evening,
        	clouds shiver by the door                            	rain pours outside the town
                                            	òrìṣà ilé ẹni kì í hunni         	but my great aunt turns rat
poison in amala for me                   	my bones shake the fortitude of loss 
                                                        	my mother runs outside screaming at the blood in my mouth
the river turns toward me    	 into a sand house
                    	between the sky & the cities floating beneath me, a father & a son carry shards of glass
in their bosom
        	òde là ńṣàgbà, ilé kan bí ìbó; bó pe títí,
àtilé àtòde ní ḿbo wáá kàn
 
                                	my first sin was i came as a son
                                                                                	arole
                                            	the second is
                                                        	my grandfather blessed me with his final breath
ogún-mobí, ọmọ kòrikò;
ọgbon-mowò ọmọ èrúwà;
kàkà ká bí ẹgbàá bùn, ká bí
kanṣoṣo bùn, ó kúkú yá
 
                                                                    	a goat bleats
aching the body
with redemption         
 
Sikira,— omo iya 'alakara
        	—my grandmother
tears her palm with a knife
        	& pours herself inside my mouth
 
 
                                            	i came four days late
                                                        	earth mothers spent the night
                                            	sealing me dead inside my mother’s womb
 
the muezzin
mounts the
pulpit
 
the muezzin falls
off
 
        	a congregation tumbles in wonder—
                    	at the beginning of my life
my bruised life
                                            	the bruised almond tree dried
 
in the mosque where my grandfather prayed his final fajr
where, outside, beside a woman who roasted corn
& sold groundnuts, he made ablutions; the children hymned
alfathia
        	al hamdu lillaahi rabbil ‘alameen
ar-rahman ar-raheem maaliki yaumid deen
 
 
in the silence of solitude, the bizarre calmness of dusk, fireflies eulogize the algorithms of home
        	in the dream, the hunter’s gun turns toward the house of sand where my body hides its flight
                                	turns toward the paper boat, the abundance of brown leaves
                                            	pans toward the choir of boys singing their lungs out of a cathedral
 
the day of reckoning is the day the bats find joy in their cave
        	in the songs where i am searching the city for candles
                    	i find the wall, my grandmother’s face, the lines on her cheeks,
the map of time
 
i wake in the turquoise blue room
        	the cat meowing as my great aunty
& her company of witches gather around the baby cot
        	picking my body out with a needle                        	orogún kì í jogún orogún
                                                                                            	òkò lọ mọ: ọlorun ní ńwí
pé ká sọ  síbi tó dára
 
the sea collects me from the sand house
                    	my mother puts me to sleep
                                                        	the dream
returns

About the Author:

Adedayo Agarau is a 2024 Ruth Lilly-Rosenberg Fellowships finalist, Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and a Cave Canem Fellow. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Agbowó Magazine: A Journal of African Literature and Art and a Poetry Reviews Editor for The Rumpus. He is the author of the chapbooks Origin of Names (African Poetry Book Fund, 2020) and The Arrival of Rain (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2020). Adedayo’s debut collection, The Years of Blood, won the Poetic Justice Institute Editor’s Prize for BIPOC Writers and will be published by Fordham University Press in the fall of 2025.

*Feature image by Steve Johnson on Unsplash