ISSUE 5 | JULY 2022 | REINCARNATION
after Kaveh Akbar; after Richard Siken; after Ilya Kaminsky
This is the season where grace is most difficult;
hunger, prominent; the body constantly running
out of fuel. Hey, wild hands drumming,
can I have that boyish zeal? Windows clapping,
red dogs barking in the streets, can I have, again,
those gone days where the only consequence
was fun? I am losing the heart of my youth. I am
stacking, with shaky hands, jagged rocks
by the shore of this blue dream—knowing
that every pebble is a moment balanced in time,
& waiting for the collapse. How now the wind
tears through it all. This is not how it ends. This
must not be how it ends. Tell me about that year
when I threaded the eye of a storm, how life
had only just begun, how it was cold and no one
could breathe. I was on a mare, somewhere
in the sky, & all around me the clouds were falling,
cotton fluff by cotton fluff by cotton fluff, when
at once, I pierced the fabric of the world & sewed shut
the mouth of the rogue wind. I can do it all again.
Timi Sanni
Timi Sanni writes from Lagos, Nigeria. He was the winner of the 2021 Anita McAndrews Award Poetry Contest. His works have appeared in Black Warrior Review, New Delta Review, Lolwe, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. Find him on twitter @timisanni
Photo by Iswanto Arif on Unsplash