Self-Portrait As An Unbroken Thing

By Ayiyi Joel

Who doesn't dream of Heaven
With all the hell we bed through on earth—Nome Emeka Patrick

Everything that carries breath
Is not wiped into erasure.
Here, my brother's absence does not return home
To mother. In the beginning 
There was no protest/
After the thirst for freedom comes the sacrifice.
I'm on the field like all other times
& The boys here are in full. Meaning:
There are no memories to complete a boy's body/
No feet threaded into silence.
The damp air does not reek of burning/
Just the smell of mangoes & dead leaves & cashews.
There's the falling of dews on tendrils.
Not smoke
Climbing out of a razed home.
Flowers never wilted/
Birds do not fall/
Butterflies never lost wings/
Morning breaks the night into a new Dawn,
There's the call of the rooster/
Not of riffles/
The song of the glorious call to prayer.
& Everyone wakes
& No one is missing
& No one mourns.

Biography

Ayiyi Joel, TPC XVI, is a young budding poet from Edo state in Nigeria. A Best of the Net Nominee and winner of the Shuzia EPIPHANY Poetry Competition, and 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.