issue one / serendipity
In this time of Drought
Babatunde Waliyullah Adesokan
The radio murders & mutters
names & obsequies in monochrome.
Some grief becomes just a headline.
Read & forgotten. Some home
becomes a brine of dust. A body
of salt, drowning in grief.
In our folklore,
a vulture carried sacrifice
to stem this drought
but on her way to heavens
she was beaten
by rain to her present baldness.
Since then a tomb becomes a home
of wail & the elders bear laceration
of un-storied hardship.
Yet on the radio:
a pastor preachifies baptism
an imam implores ablution
government gullies rainfall
into big-ticket bottles.
Everyone shouts in-dust-ries
but it has been a long time that
sweat turns to sweet songs.
A sibling of drought, stuck
in the billowing dust, cries
to her fairer neighbor:
"aid me in this time of drought
& I remember you during my rain"
names & obsequies in monochrome.
Some grief becomes just a headline.
Read & forgotten. Some home
becomes a brine of dust. A body
of salt, drowning in grief.
In our folklore,
a vulture carried sacrifice
to stem this drought
but on her way to heavens
she was beaten
by rain to her present baldness.
Since then a tomb becomes a home
of wail & the elders bear laceration
of un-storied hardship.
Yet on the radio:
a pastor preachifies baptism
an imam implores ablution
government gullies rainfall
into big-ticket bottles.
Everyone shouts in-dust-ries
but it has been a long time that
sweat turns to sweet songs.
A sibling of drought, stuck
in the billowing dust, cries
to her fairer neighbor:
"aid me in this time of drought
& I remember you during my rain"
Babatunde Waliyullah Adesokan (Toonday) writes from Oyo State, Nigeria. He works with Firstbank. He is a lover of poetry; a lover of everything that breathes poetry. His works appeared / forthcoming in Pangolin Review, Wales Haiku, Ethel-Zine, Shallowtales Review, Stillwater Review, RoadRunnerReview, Lucent Dreaming etc. Twitter:@tunde_adesokan Instagram: @toondayatkins Facebook: tunde.w.adesokan, Phone number: 07032689217