4 POEMS
MARTYR'S LEGACY
my soldier dad — the flying dodgeman as his lieutenants call him
failed to dodge only one bullet in his adventurous camouflage career.
but even the miss was not a mis-take, it was deflection for a cure. his
shooter — the magic marksman — as the majors call him, missed
the target but my soldier dad threw himself into the bullet & pierced
the cancer in his lungs to prevent it from spreading its wings in his
anatomy & concluded himself in the process. he'd rather die in action
than expire in the colony of chemo remission. but unlike my soldier
dad before me, i've become a voodooist. i hang a wishbone & cowerie
beads around my neck like a rosary, make a vow of never missing a
shot to kill two birds with one stone & not expire in the process if i'm
to complete the martyr's mission & raise our family flag at the end of
the finish line.
convenient amnesia
let's evanesce into recondite fathom of our minds
& transcend to ground zero — the spot where we are
nobody's body/nobody's son/nobody's daughter/
nobody's dream/nobody's expectation/nobody's
burden/nobody's responsibility/hence, providing
convenient amnesia for our aprosexia, just
the two of us, wandering in lust, but
before we get lost, let's hurry back into our
bodies to allay their fears before they call the
exorcist to pull out a spoiler on the best seconds of
our lives, if they did but didn't know
SIN CITY
The city covers closest distance
between the
earth and the sky — no surprise it rains every night
The city is unaware of its sins because the rain washes
them off before day---breaks
Everyday opens with a clean sheet, pure of last
night's misdeeds.
New days come clad in calm collectedness with
an aura of truce underlining its horizon withholding the incoming
sins before the sun sinks
Every night, the innocence of birth blood competes with
decadence of death blood but loses the battle of
influence in their confluence underneath the soil
The rain is the city's silencer — rinses away all the pain
of last night in a clean sweep — so immaculate that victims
that survived the purge prefer to be called victors over survivors
One night, the clouds went on furlough to another city &
"Sin City" woke up the next day choked in its own bloodbath
CORRECT APPLICATION OF HEAT
Is that figurative furnace/we forge to fortify us into/
modified versions/by burning bad behaviors/&
that imaginary tong/for manipulating our fury/
into/fine fragrances from/our tongue/
It is that/which springs our/agricultural pearls/
into/hypertonic liveliness/of their/highest utility/
when assuming/some human attributes/
like the vegetable oil/putting a/warm smile in the pan/
like the slices/of yam humming/bubbles/in the cooking pot/&
like the rice/rising/to/multiply/their size/in hot water
It/is/the/natural sensation/&
catharsis/that flows/when the/he-23/&
she-23/chromosomes/fuse into 46/in orgasmic fashion/
in/late December/on their first night/as mr./&
mrs./
Abdulrahman M. Abu-Yaman is a writer/artist from the city of Minna. He exhibited his artworks during book and arts festivals in Kaduna and Maiduguri. Winner of Wakaso Poetry Prize (Jan. 2021) and Hysteria Writing Competition (Flash) in 2021. His works have appeared in The Lagos Review, Kalahari Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Brittle Paper, Ann Arbor Review and elsewhere. He is the chairman of Minna Literary Society (MLS). He tweets @abuu_yaman
