May 25, 2026

by OLUSOJI OBEBE

We are ends and Creek

a boy disembowels the red earth,

his feet covered in mud.

he fixes his fingers for a fetch. 

packs a handful and scoops it into a tin.

the sun never goes down here. and

it is the season that brings silence

to the shores, with weariness wearing off the canoes

and abandoned nets looking like a heap of looted glories.

the wooden quay quakes to every slap of the water

or the footsteps of the boy.

he comes as though he would be harvesting his dreams hook, line and sinker.

there is a bait at the tip of the hook

as he lowers it religiously into the water

and brushes aside the duckweeds.

he also settles his little net from twigs and tangles. prepares for the next adventure.

when dusk comes, the sun still never goes down and

the place again is a stale splash of sourness.

everything reeks of rust and dust.

and what the hook brings is fish running out of flesh.

what the water drags ashore are either dead or empty.

and there the boy is. a little delicate thing 

held together by hope. returning home with the ruins time has facilitated.

*

Unliving

for a boy whose name I choose not to mention

i

that day, omonira street was an acrylic of orange light, plotted with

sketches of song so ripe that it is fading and becoming frail of life.

a vehicle sighed past. a bistro by the right creaked close—

after a gulf burp has paid the bill for exhaustion. 

a group of minstrels somewhere welcomed the dusk with a prayer

to a god for protection from darkness/dust. the symphony is lost. 

and I heard my footsteps panting after home.

ii 

he came to me.

a loaf locked in my hands

like the secret to heaven.

boss! he hailed. he talked

as though he swallowed a toad.

he was my friend. I mean,

he used to be someone

I know. and I am sure

he was 17 like me then, but the

head of his voice had balded.

he showed me:

the calligraphy of death

at his back, a body losing

the patience of living.

he chuckled still. he talked still

and muffled emotions on his tongue. 

he'd embraced the street. and 

on the street, everywhere is home,

even the grave. he'd gone out 

of home looking for home.

he got some salvation. 

he got trapped in the salvation.

iii

the next day had broken with a bullet.

it was a time boys of my age

called for a feast of flesh.

a tiny crowd had gathered

round another body of aborted dream.

the spirit had diffused

and the leftover skin had lost 

one eye. that is, there was no time

to blink a thinking.

a hole was fixed on its head. 

a reminder that some things don't

find home; they create one themselves.

then, another shot rent the air.

the people quickly found home before

they would lose their bodies for something else to dwell.

in the night, I learnt

it was him. and I remembered

he took my change that orangey day.

perhaps he would have

had enough to buy his freedom

if he had taken my advice too.

I didn’t give him

that. it would make no difference,

either.

*

Waterfly

this place reminds me of grieving:

the crowd of people by the roadside

like a company of condolences,

the swarthy boy holding on to a corncob

with eyes that look like

they are tending to an ocean,

the faceless girls who lean on a cracked wall,

the radio set on the verandah

blaring out with no one around to listen,

the madman roaming the streets,

the houses with fallen doors as

though death has just burgled out,

the wounded dog leaping back home,

the woman pouring out

water from a basin,

& the beturbaned man using water for ablution.