By Adeniyi Odukoya

Trawl

The girls choose their shells and conspire to milk the cosmos. With large barns, men the age of my father trouble the water for gold, fishes, and fillers in tune with the earth’s impulse. As depth bites into the cast fishnet, an offering of groans. Lone is the bond between man and the tides. A pair of goats roam the Cathedral for hay. Their owners on the bank negotiating bigger fishes at wrenched rates. Perhaps it will rain, and the rafters of our home will grunt in the lavish for sunlight. The birds on the moist green walls squeak like seaweed. I watch, greatly distraught, as the men leave their boats in the open, veins slung over their shoulders. Had they any consolation before leaving the waters for home, it was the kneaded hope that the fishes would be happier tomorrow.

Plums

The bus always leaves for Lagos by 4am.
For thirty years, it leaves and returns with silk
Too frail, at the touch of fingers it fails;
The kids, clouds spiralling down the stairway,
Wait every day with a longing that does not seem
To age. Innocence twangs
In their veins, moves their feet with noise,
Numbs them to the danger of the day.
I sit with the inconsolable soul of the dark—
The voices of pleasure in the deep woods:
A man named Pius and the woman in his arms,
Agnes, dig the cores for an atlas, a set of gopher woods
To build a boat to defy geography. Pius
Falls to his knees, spreading flames, loathing
The world he adores.He was at the beach,
In the rain, when a delicate, graceful hand
Washed his faith, hatched him a miracle,
Those white robes of hope. He said to me,
Having no clue we were both raised on cowshit,
That it’d be my turn to rebel soon. He meant to say,
Someday I’d be long gone and decades later, I’d return
Barefoot to some plums for hints of sunrise. E

Adeniyi Odukoya is a Nigerian poet and essayist. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming in the Guardian UK, The Republic, Cincinnati Review, and Palette.