A meal is bought with blood,
and then, chaos of hard clay.
You linger in nudity, the night
is serrated in embarrassment;
rusty mist, absence of flowers,
a floodtide of dust & shadows.
Your eyes fall into the crevice
of sound & quietude, an escape
for boys who pray themselves
into guns of empty cartridges.
I write with your life & my own
when all is made equal & each
follows the pattern to emptiness.
When smells are the carnage
of our skins that we bear in vows
to the renewal of paradise.
The wind flits me in its infinite palm
to the other side of the ritual
where I soak myself in water,
my past cleansed to the urgency
of a foreign god. Where we find
a religion in your burden that lays
before us, & musing on parchments,
we pray upon your corpse
while you are alive.
Aremu Adams Adebisi lives close to the riverine and loves to eat shrimps and crayfish. A boy among five older girls, explores the themes of equality, liberation, womanism, boyhood and existentialism. He has works published in Mistymountain Review, Kalahari Review, Africanwriters, and elsewhere. He likes to call himself the Jos-plateau Indigobird which is endemic to Nigeria and one of a kind.