on joy
when the news reached me, i was writing a poem.
i take god out of the poem & stand it beside the
shadow of a tree i imagine as fig. i ask myself
what it becomes of fire when the flame is put
to shame. i tell the shadow that light is coming.
so whose child will mourn the shadow so whose
father will bury the thirst so whose mother will
the fang of hunger find in her intestine. i want to
lift the hope from this poem & give it to the dead
person’s mother, give wings to the ghost, color the
grief rainbow, unsalt the tears & teach eyes the path
out of sea, bring to the father the blueness of comfort,
teach death about itself, wreck the ship in everyone’s tears.
on guilt
give the trees a voice.
the hush whispers of leaves
is sometimes quieter than the sound of kiss breaking
between two bodies rehearsing disappearance. the door opens
& winds catch everything weightless.
i’ve always dreamt
that he was the one whose body thinned, named him
after birds who wing the sky brushing aside the faces they
once knew.
everything changes once you leave. the taste
of kiss & the staleness of lips, the hush of leaves the silence
of trees. nothing returns you to the beginning.
not even the promise
of a kiss.
poem to the god of mirth
the grandest form of mercy is air—
i’ve been searching for a path out
since my grandmother’s demise
the house where i left memory
was set on fire by a child
whose mother died when he was six
what is it about absence that orchestrates
fire: i put a moth to flames last week
it crackled and crackled
Adedayo Agarau is a Robert Hayden Scholarship fellow of Stockton University and a recipient of the Stanley Awards for International Research (2022), University of Iowa. He is studying for MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop’23. His manuscript, The Morning The Birds Died, was a finalist of the Sillerman Prize (2021). His chapbook, Origin of Names, was selected for New Generation African Poet—African Poetry Book Fund (2020). Vegetarian Alcoholic Press published his chapbook, The Arrival of Rain (January 2020). His poems are featured or forthcoming in World Literature Today, Anomaly, Frontier, Iowa Review, Boulevard, and elsewhere. Adedayo is the Editor-in-Chief at Agbowó: An African magazine of literature and art, and the editor of New International Voices Series at Icefloe-Press. Adedayo edited Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry (2020).