In Which I Burp a Litany — Fatihah Quadri Eniola

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Tall wall keeps clouds from sight,
still the moon is heard murmuring. I stand on the parapet of night to
seek the dead in every drawn curtain —in the piercing silence of
the unknown. The moment, speaking the language of hope-seeds,
comes like waves ebbing into the hand of a boy & I want to rush a
handful into my throat & belch a sensation of untouched flowers so
my mouth would stop existing as a labyrinth where prayers bend into an
inferno of loss. I want to stop by the roadside of grace —carve a day
out my body like a sculpture & let the dewdrops beat my tongue
into an aperture for testimonies. & In all this wildness, I want to stroll
the road ’till it widens into a clearway for miracles, I want a striation of
rainbows, like the stretchmarks on my mother’s skin. Oh river, oh
death, overturn the howls into birdcalls, let not the earth quake
on our shoulders, let us bubble in flashbacks of damp; not dust,
not the haunt of fire, not the ash-transitioning of things.


The Poet:

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Fatihah Quadri Eniola is a young poet from Nigeria, She is currently a member of HCAF (Hilltop creative arts foundation), Black Girls’ Tales and Nibstears Poetry Cave. She has contributed a number of intricately constructed poems to literary journals including Soft Star Speculative, Art Lounge, The Kalahari Review, Beatnik Cowboy, Notion press, Blue Minaret, De Curated, Syncronized Chaos and elsewhere. She lives with a very cute cat, Honiy.

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