{"id":1954,"date":"2023-01-28T10:49:15","date_gmt":"2023-01-28T16:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thespectaclstg.wpengine.com\/?p=1954"},"modified":"2023-02-08T10:09:05","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T16:09:05","slug":"poetry-by-ojo-taiye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=1954","title":{"rendered":"Poetry by Ojo Taiye"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

The Shores of Faith<\/h4>\n

after Luke Kennard<\/h6>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I dream we live in a tiny coastal house, held together with pieces of plastic, cardboard and bricks, overlooking the sea. It was the only nice part of town my mother could afford. Even though she wanted to make us happy, the times were difficult, and mostly because I felt a part of her was lost to the realm of fantasy, of hope (without recourse to borrowing). She keeps telling my father\u2019s sisters: we are good, they are so good, we are doing fine… oh that convergent seconds were gut more than luck made me ask: I can\u2019t remember what was it she said but I knew our pace was slow until it wasn\u2019t. But I have to say for five mornings I saw my mother make living beautiful every time she raises her voice to whistle a happy tune in Malagasy\u2014the sky changing its grammar to match the imagination in her eye and it did: a wet green field with its new colors blooming in summer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/pre>\n
\n
Periwinkles<\/h4>\n
for Ogoni Massacre, 1995<\/h6>\n
You see; I was in my bed, around my backyard, Ogoni\nwas falling. There are no windows from which I did not\nsee the village burning and bodies belly-up in oil-\nstained rivers. Hawks are flying high above the barren\nswamplands where my child- hood use to be. There is\nno other way to say it. I mean something about all\nthose memories under glass\u2013 I mean how we fell \u2013 I\nmean bangs and the ghosts curling itself out from the\ncave in my mouth. A country is a place where\neverything is home and nothing is a bullet. Here are\nsome ways in which I am not free: the earth loosened\nand I am so much salt, grains washed at the shore,\ndrawn out and pushed in like the inquisitive chin of a\nchild. This is how it is about us: it is never enough to be\nborn black and a minority. I take a wooden bench\noutside and watch the shorebirds gaze at us \u2013 the\ncoincidence of fear and worry. Even if there were gods\nwhat could they do about the whole rot of human\ngreed? Wreckage is the first clear thought most people\nhave when they come here. Again, for the last time:\nevery wound point to the same place \u2013 too many\npieces of dove splitting at the seam \u2013 a burden of proof\nand I sit on my grandmother\u2019s flair for language<\/em> like a\nsolitary bird. The damages on her fishponds are widely\nreported. And if I could remember anything that's here\nnow: it will be the cattle egret I followed with my eye,\ncovered in oil sheen \u2013 blackened from its legs up to its\nneck \u2013 something we say of the sky inside us, which is\nwhy one might say it was not necessarily the gift that\nwas our bane, although, it is sometimes, but how it was\nmisuse and delivered to our door step as stench.\n\n\f\n<\/pre>\n
\n
Portrait At 19<\/h4>\n
after Kamilah Aisha Moon<\/h6>\n
The wall clock in my room still ticks.\nAnd the years always look the same.\nMy hands have become small passerine birds. And\nwhen the music plays, I listen to the injuries, and not\nthe cricket. I take the shape of carved elephant tusk.\nThe earth is warmer and my mother is dead. Joy is\ndifficult and each day I am insatiable. Another\nmorning, I am different and my thoughts become\nhouses. Don\u2019t talk to me about love, or what I am\nincapable of. I placed my ancestors upon the waters\nand then a gooseneck sprite appears.\nHow many times I\u2019ve wanted to relish the past. I\nsmiled all the times I felt pained or cheated. My skin\nas envelopes as a whole bundle of lotus flowers.\nOften times I\u2019ll say I didn\u2019t know it then\u2014how life\nworks, my sorrows without sail or forfeiture.\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ojo Taiye is a young Nigerian writer who uses poetry as a tool to hide his frustration with society. Taiye\u2019s most recent work is largely concerned with the effects of climate change on homelessness, migration, drought, and famine, as well as a range of transversal issues ranging from racism, black identity, and mental health. His projects explore neocolonialism, institutionalized violence, and ecological trauma in the oil-rich, polluted Niger delta. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Salamander, Consequence Forum, Stinging Fly, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, Banshee, Willow Springs, <\/em>Lambda Literary\u2019s Poetry Spotlight, Fiddlehead, Puritan, Frontier Poetry, Notre Dame Review,<\/em> and Strange Horizon.<\/em> Taiye has worked on the exhibition \u201cFuture(s) 2021\u201d with Catalyst Arts and Belfast Photo Festival, the Scene Stirling COP26 Project, and the 2021 Sustran Black History Month Art Project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Shores of Faith | Periwinkles | Portrait At 19<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[85],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}