From Mubanga Kalimamukwento’s three poems to Adedayo Agarau’s memorable lines, check out our top ten most popular poems of this year.

Two Poems | Chiwenite Onyekwelu

I say I’m fine. It's a love trick I play for her: she asks 
    of my ache & I make it
disappear. She asks of lungs, & in place of a rot, I stun
   her with gills.

Two Poems | Adesiyan Oluwapelumi

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.

Two Poems | Joemario Umana

I've seen many stars burn themselves out
trying to be the sun because the sky didn't appreciate them enough.
I've seen many broken necks
because of heavy crowns.
I've seen water become thicker than blood,
because blood is too hard to please
enough

Two Poems | Roseline Mgbodichinma

I.   My soul is a Venn diagram, 
An opening, 
A pretentious geoid, 
Coloured grey & sometimes fuschia.
My body, dense as the full moon
has a potential to become the universe,
But on whose bones will the galaxy be built?

Three Poems | Mubanga Kalimamukwento

say your mother bled you/
next to the smoke that thunders
say the raging water gave her comfort
while you wrestled your way out
say the smoothened rubble along the Zambezi became home/
& you called the thundering Mosi-oa-Tunya
before a man stumbled upon it/ shouting
Discovery/

Two Poems | Adedayo Agarau

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

Hallucinate My Hallucination Back To Me | Amanda Nechesa

these are the things i want to say to you 
things that can only be said in the spaces 
between the spaces between the silence 
that now exists between us. 
i am breaking, i’d say.

Three Poems | Inimfon Inyang-Kpanantia

What did it feel like
              To know water is the greatest tragedy — 
healer & destroyer in the same plot.
They say

Anansa 
             forced the river into you.

Four Poems | Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo

Lord, 
        ache with me,
I, too, want to touch the wounds 
                                                    the nails left.

A Real Grief | Josh Lefkowitz

Was it hormones or a midlife crisis
that was stirring me so? Or perhaps
five days in Canadian nature, alongside
mountains ancient with grandeur,
had taught me the meaning of fleeting.