Snail Hunters: An Elegy

By Ayiyi Joel

Today is the fragment, making it ten years
We last walked into that night.

In this verse, you are a bird
Who never lost flight & song. You,

A body with enough air strumming the lungs.
In this part, you did not become
speckles

Of dust breezed away by the cold winds of death.
In this chapter, you live again & we,

We walk together, plunging into the dark,
into the bushes near home in search of snails.

You, a master in the art of picking them from 
Their hideout. Spotting with the eyes of a miniature 

Flashlight. & I, better at placing a price
Over these little creatures at  arígbajó market

—as if we were bounty hunters, retrieving
Runaways & vagabonds.


Writer’s Biography
Ayiyi Joel, TPC XVI, is a young budding poet from Edo state in Nigeria. He is a Best Of The Net Nominee and the Shuzia EPIPHANY Poetry Competition winner. He was longlisted for the Akachi Chukwuemeka Poetry Prize and the SEVHAGE poetry contest. His works have been published/forthcoming in B'K, Rough Cut Press, Rigorous, Parousia, African Writers Mag, Kalahari Review, and elsewhere.