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.