Once my life was brilliant with you in it

The baby, has a baby / She’s no longer a child / A child she must now bear

A thick wad yesterday because he was a potbellied politician/ Wafer-thin today because he is a construction worker/ Something is better than nothing

Solemnity—A poem by Arthur Davies | Liberia

We danced not to forget your message / We danced to live up to the kofifi blues

kneel before her feet, behold her face/ and confess that it glitters/ tell her the moon steals from her brightness.

What I really want/ is for you to let me be

Once you were my beloved. I swam/in rivers, then oceans, then not at all

I am sad that grief breaks you into strong fragments/ of strength, for us.

A poem by Ariyo Ahmad

A poem by Muyiwa Adesokun

The messiahs’ miracle left us with baskets full of brokenness heavy for us to bear

Of what are we to feel nostalgic? / Of faraway screams lost to the ears of mourning siblings?

A poem by Damilola Omotoyinbo

A poem by Jeremy Karn