Fire Dances Around the Edges

Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arowolo, Nigeria

April's dreams are here   along with its wind 

swirling branches   and the squelching ground after 

   I'm in this primordial city   where hills and roofs are brown 

      as the dirt that measures its roads

through the broken window of my room

             that is now rented by darkness, noises of running children 

          stir the walls—before water captures the sill

before all metastasizing sorrows that have long settled 

upon my sternum      are washed away 

   like a gutter     licked clean of its algae by a passing flood

yet the world is on fire    again      & although i am not burned

     my laughter is charred black   

my countrymen    loiter at the newsstand   with their dreams low in incandescence 

    as they lament the leftovers of their brothers & sisters

whittled down into ashes    crushed between the front pages of newspapers

            tell the critic how much grief has spilled 

out of the quill that is fashioned to sing ghazals

    the sting of inferno   mounting against the bud of mirth         

            it is hard to take in   like a fishbone stuck in a child's throat   

but a catastrophe may drop

                       another village down to its knees  at the end of this poem

by the sporadic rain of bullets

       the truth lingers like fog: Death has made war upon the land 

& our homes have fallen apart

         & the outskirts of towns are no longer at ease 

even the paths we toe to farms are covered in blood & bones 

        the noise that jolts the day awake is not the ironbell of a cow 

but the digging of grounds for the caskets the night gave us

Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arowolo is a poet and essayist from Nigeria. He won the 1st Edition of Wanjohi Prize for African Poetry, received a honourable mention in 2024 Bacopa Literary Review Poetry Contest, and was a finalist for Folorunsho Editor's Poetry Prize. His works have appeared—or are forthcoming—in 2024 Small Fictions anthology, Bacopa Literary Review, Weganda Review, The Republic, ANMLY, Nigeria Review, Breath and Shadow, and elsewhere. He currently serves as a Poetry Reader for Chestnut Review.