The things I see and imagine
For about two weeks in August 2013, I was alone on a hill in Nkwelle Ezunaka, Anambra State. I was a corps member working as a teacher in a school that was on holidays. All corps members had travelled for vacation, but I had to return weeks before resumption because there was a problem with …
Continue reading "A Second Chance at Solitude"
I was reading one of John Ashbery's poems last night when I opened Twitter and saw tweets about his death. It was a weird event that still feels like a lie when I recount it to myself. I was looking at his work again by the way of a list of poets I encountered two …
Can anyone refer a chiropractor (affordable) in Lagos, please? Can they assure me said chiropractor won’t act like my (equally) affordable tailor? Will I go to the chiropractor on Monday, subject my spine to being pressed and rubbed and shifted in ways that would redefine pain, then have to wait till Friday to retrieve relief …
On the bridge, a carnage, Turmoil in a flipped white bus Unified gasp like collective hiccups. Head stuck in glowing screen — For fear, nah — for horror. You cannot stay bowed forever Death holds an irresistible allure. The bloodied head, the resolved chin The displaced leg, the lifeless Body on the route to …
Crazy It’s a sight as common as the bright yellow buses: two fighting. Drivers boxing. Two car owners testing the strength of their egos with the force of balled up fists. I remember the day I went crazy. I hasn’t happened yet, but I’m looking at it now. Me, pot-bellied. Me with a Camry bruised …
I entered the empty bus after walking a good stretch of the bus stop looking for a less messy point to cross the pool of mud that had gathered in the middle of Oshodi. I tip-toed over puddles and chided myself for leaving the house fifteen minutes late. I’d fallen prey to that additional minute …
Battling traffic daily in Lagos has recently turned me into an accidental poet, the kind that looks at a gridlock in Obalende and thinks of Yeat’s popular poem. Some people might think the opportunity to make art I’m incapable of except in moments of distress is a blessing. When I’m hungry—in that moment between lucidity …
I worry about the man who walks home at dawn, jacket in hand, his singlet brown and stiff from dirt while I rush in ankara paired with jeans skipping muddy puddles to save what is left of my shoes. Conductor who chooses fight over paying the hound-like money collectors who clutch at his shirt that …
Life runs differently for those who have nothing, who expect nothing. It is impossible, for instance, to compare yearly notes with those who started the year narrowly escaping death. For while yours could be full of achievements and still make you think of how much of a bad year it was because of the things …
One of my answers to the popular question of dead writers I would love to meet is Emily Dickonson—right after C S Lewis and Flannery O’ Connor. While alive, she achieved the kind of solitude I’ve long desired. Reading about her hermitic life often makes me feel like I share temperaments with at least one …
