Adamu Yahuza is a budding poet and spoken word artist from Kwara State, Nigeria. His poem, ‘Catalogue of memories’ has been nominated by Oneblackboylikethat Review for 2023 best of the Net Prize.

A stranger once knocked on our door & went with my voice

watch a man fall off like a deciduous leaf  / like a fraying nylon

   i watch my prayers fall off from the crevices of my

heart  

there is something about this body, something that keeps entering me into room I’d never know of its outlet

    &  I keep searching for peace   with my body broken

piece by piece

                  I keep opening doors to grief

tonight, I do not want to open the Quran and  recede into my shadow

  neither do I want to see in it a strange God

                all I ever quest for is a salvation from this grief hanging on my neck like a medal

how do I tell the Imaam that my imaan keeps shrinking every second?    

        the last time a stranger knocked on our door

I stare at him like one watching a silent foreign movie

without a subtitle

        this entity can’t even answer waalaykum salam

how do I see God without walking the path of cactuses?

        I besiege to grief to breathe

I cling on the thorns of cactuses

     I lay on the bed   reading the poems written with the

letters of the dead.

       it’s Eid & my brother’s breathe keep raging my heart like a wildfire

 his face spread forth on the canvass of the sky

dear lord,  I hope this reaches you— grant this black

boy some space to reform   my body leaks everything it ever hold

           including the prayers

& how you kissed my brother to dust.

Contributor’s Bio

Adamu Yahuza is a budding poet and spoken word artist from Kwara State, Nigeria. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Synchronized Chaos, Angel Rust, Kalahari Review, Ngiga Review, Arkorewrites, Konyashamsrumi, Arts Lounge, Teenlit journal, Pine Cone Review, and elsewhere. His poem, ‘Catalogue of memories’ has been nominated by Oneblackboylikethat Review for the 2023 best of the Net Prize. He is a lover of books and flavored tea. When not writing, he reads other poets and creatives or he is stuck in the daydreams of kemanji-his hometown- how to transform into one of the most renowned cities in the world.

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