Dry World
Heaven has sailed far from me / My Earth is sinking like a boat / Wind lifts dust to the mountaintop. / Everything that belongs to me scatters / Soya beans, sorghum, bananas blow away / My world has been swept away by wind.
Are You Still Trying to Tell Me Something About Mercy?
I rebel, I rebel to stay in the house tonight, / there’s a war on the streets, and I have been asked to fight. / My mother won’t look at me, and my father’s gone cold, / and the only gift I’ve gotten was not to grow old,
Ars Poetica
that to become a poet / you need to have had your home / stolen from you / your dreams confiscated, / your hopes held hostage
His Tousled Hair, His Toothless Grin
When I settled in America, / anti-apartheid meetings thrilled me- / Injustice anywhere is injustice / everywhere scrawled on walls.
When Primo Came Home From the Viet Nam War (1966)
One-hundred percent disabled, / He would never work again / Or lift anything heavy. / I also envisioned my fate / There in my mother’s kitchen
Divided Over Dinner
This was one reason she wanted to live alone. Dinnertime was meant for family to be together at one table and enjoy each other’s company. In the Adebayo’s house, dinnertime was a mere façade to act like they were one big loving family.
Gatekeeping
Meanwhile, hell writing another bill of sale, / buying territory for expansion, / gentrifying dreams, redlining / degrees of treachery. / In a world of flames, / rent ain’t affordable.
The Ancestor’s Song
I read that you walked / across the continent / searching for your / ancestral home / 3 small moving dots / seen from the wide / sky’s view
color you dark
if i could color you dark, / i would. / you’d feel that bullet in your chest / as they wear that silent pin. / they trade your brown skin best / for the unarmed cost of melanin.
A Man of Colour
it’s easy to feel colonial privilege / weighing down heavy on your sprouting dreams / through closed doors and lost opportunities, / till your voice is voiceless
Shizuoka Bison
Surrounded by forest, and dripping / sugar bark, everything reminds me / of who I don’t know I am.
Hyperpigmentation
My skin collects memories of pain in pigment / I am at my core, a nostalgic being / These markings are curated on my surface / Like masterpieces of a gallery / Viewed but never known
Best Small Fictions
Announcing the Decolonial Passage Best Small Fictions nominees for 2024!
Grandpa Brown’s Land
what remains? / battered boards, / remnants of our homemade 5-room shanty. / grouted well / that nourished 16 children, livestock, cotton.
Fufu, Sardines, and Tomato Sauce
A world-class meal. It tasted like red soil, dry seasons and warm climates. It tasted like cousins’ daily fights and late afternoon reconciliations. It tasted like Grandma sitting on her plastic chair watching us from the corner of her veranda. It tasted like heaven.
the Decolonial Passage 