 The winner of the October giveaway is Flourish This giveaway is courtesy of SprinNG and Roving Heights Bookstore.
Instruction: Read the publications on the SprinNG website for the month and write a comment on 2 or more of the publications. Add your name and email address when filling in the comment box (email addresses will not be made public). We encourage that your comment meets at least 2 of these goals: 1. Invite another reader into the world of beauty you have seen in a work. 2. Provide a very brief summary of what you read. 3. Give your interpretation/perspective of what has been written. 4. Provide suggestions for improvement. The SprinNG team will evaluate the comments and select the winner of the bookstore gift card at the end of the month. Comment on the poems, book reviews, articles, interviews, and guest posts.
1 Comment
By Njikonye Charles  before I pared my skin into the verses of the Psalms, before I learned the liturgy of how a
tongue can spit its bearer out / a pit of tightly meshed melancholy & trespasses by confessing a plain-hearted prayer to God, before I unlocked the gate of my soul to God's sparkle, before all, before equanimity—I lived a life enshrouded by agony, the darkness of the night, tumbling into my mouth. my existence wilted onto evil, catastrophe boating me from the softness of peace. sin was a cloak I wore, tethering me to the belly of oblivion. tell me, how do you relish joy when your conscience is a ship sinking into an ocean of rigid commotion? when your tongue is a city void of the covenants of Jehovah? O, how graceless & morbid were By Abdulrauf Olajide  the breeze stops breathing
cool in my ears, my heart keeps breaking down at your rememb-- erance, i tried to hold you tight to myself, but you are water -- you keep escaping the tiny wholes of my fingers — leaving me empty without you turning back like a river. By Jimoh Adeiza Abdulrahaman  There's a big void in my family oozing and spreading wide like an epidemic. Everyone has been infected—me, Mummy, Alhaji, his other wives, and even his mansion.
That emptiness made Hajiya Memunat, my mum, cry that day. That day, I came back from school and scurried into Alhaji's mansion—the renowned, ageless Umar's mansion. Alhaji was 67, old but energetic. He had no child until Mum's arrival. Hajiya Sefi, Alhaji's first wife, had lived a five-year barren life: a situation that prompted Alhaji to marry Mum. A year after the union, I reared out my ugly head—my existence, as well as getting infected with the family's emptiness, began. Ten years later, Alhaji became restless: he needed more daughters or, perhaps, a son. Hajiya's ember eyes met my gaze. Her usual almond-shaped eyes were my weakness: they made my legs weak and my groins wet. At a time, I'd tried revealing these silly thoughts but got severely reprimanded. Her fury that day got me pretty scared. She'd whined and whined on and on, drew my ears through the maroon Hijab unveiling only my face, and shouted her orders, "Stop fantasizing about me. I'm a woman and your mother." By Ayoade Olamide  who gather their urges beside an escalation of fire
& watch their desires ruin to ashes. there's a place in heaven, where they lead themselves to whenever they try to unpaint the image of God from their splintered self-portrait, becoming an artwork of too many undefined colors– a chromatic caricature somewhere, there's a boy f a r a w a y from home trying to chase his shadow into the moon, at night By Babatimehin Aṣíwájú  for Prof. Ayo Olukotun, my uncle.
i. sand to sand; ashes to ashes; & dust to dust; ****** ii. once again, mother earth eats her child. cruel mother! swallowing the carcass of her children whole. your lifeless body is being lowered into the ground. & the organist plays a solemn hymn on his instrument. standing at your graveside, all the ones you ever loved. tears...& tears…& I become unsure of which it is: should a man not die? or should a man not love? |