Issue #25: Guest Reader Picks
Guest Reader April Hill helped select poetry for Issue #25. Here, she highlights three poems which particularly caught her attention.
Mayowa Oyewale
Fuck / Postcolonial
after Inua Ellams
V
When strapped with time / a song does not
stop / In Lagos / there remains the memory
of water / boats / and Black bodies moving
/ against the blue / Olokun / & his teeth of
cowries / Olokun / & my ancestors’ eyes
IV
In which / Lagos is history
III
In which / I keep wondering why / in the
world / history dredge history / doesn’t
move / yet is always ouroboric
II
In African Fiction class / my lecturer stops
for silence & says in the language of the
British Museum / Ladies and gentlemen /
fuck the post / & all that nostalgic bullshit /
pain & products of the past / still present /
still perpetual
*
A skilfully written piece of work that draws attention to the hypocrisy of postcolonialism. The movement of the slashes moving throughout the words operate perfectly as waves, and I like how Oyewale separates each paragraph to simulate the passing of time. This work immediately stood out to me as a poem that knows its own power.
Bruach Mhor
landscape with gun and tree/cornelia parker/jupiter artland
Outsize shotgun,
leaning against a tree, ready for use:
huge firearms must be needed.
Perhaps enemies approach the woods.
This must be a violent land.
Outsize shotgun,
leaning against a tree, left forgotten:
huge firearms must lack point.
Perhaps emnities have fled the woods.
This must be a peaceful land.
A land where trees
turn into weapons.
A land where weapons
turn into trees.
*
I'm always drawn to pieces of work that have something new and unusual to say about violence. Here, the ongoing conversation about territory, land, and conflict achieves a breathtaking effect in a few simple yet effective strokes. I love the play on enemies / emnities. And I love the agency of the trees.
Raul G Moldez
At the cannon’s mouth
News item: 5 former Chicago postal employees
among 11 charged in theft, fraud conspiracy
are parcels unclaimed from the City
Post Office. Undelivered letters
littering. From where I stand,
I can see messages after messages.
But I could not decode
their meanings. I wonder how
the senders feel. Or how
the addressees react. Post
men used to be most trusted.
Dark clouds forming in the sky.
Now I know weathermen’s
forecasts are true. Sometimes.
*
This is one of those poems I instantly clicked with. It feels a little more ambiguous, like it could slide out of my hands. I think I know exactly how the writer feels, on that brink between uncertainty and understanding. It feels like a poem that is reconciling with the world and the system it is living in, a poem that is carefully deciding its next step. But perhaps I have not fully decoded the meaning of this message. “(Post men used to be most trusted)” has stayed with me since.