Voluntary Exile by Jumoke Verissimo

Voluntary Exile

You who ate the light of the sun at dusk
the age of your fears is in my head
I have seen the consent in your eyes
ditch thoughts have formed,
water makes a skin on your malar.
But your lover is not a goddess,
Yet she melts you into a wraith,
like the fabled water mermaid,
who fell in love with a village pauper,
she leaves food by your door at sunset
strange meals to be eaten like communal sacrifice,
to welcome bust dreams to again reinvent themselves.
I see you no longer smell suspicion
even when the dog eats your flesh,
you have become the dog in the flesh
do I hear you pray that morning should heal you,
as you are dead before death comes to take you.
I see the desks have become coffins too,
in the night of the land, fantasised lover
and leftovers of meals abandoned before flight
hurry into the ambitions you eyed before hegira.
I have entered into your ache. I can see embers
of the future cauterising your heart,
faster than the burning of a desert sun.
Tonight like every other night to come
as the wind drops down the trees,
and leaves hug and lean on fresh twigs
and branches gather strength against the wind
you embrace returnee memories in your arms,
under the shelter of tarpaulin housings
you stay awake with your biography.

Jumoke Verissimo

Jumoke Verissimo is a Nigerian poet and writer. Her first book, I Am Memory, has won some literary awards in Nigeria. Some of her poems are in translation in Italian, Norwegian , French, Japanese, Chinese, and Macedonian. She was born on 26 December, 1979

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F for Figs by Jumoke Verissimo

F for Figs

You tell me certain foods are for gods,
a taste and my powers may abound too.
I have eaten no figs, but I have longed
though I always kept your thoughts in tethers,
tied to the root of the land I have loved
and like you I found figs are fruit for the gods
that in dreams men can get fed a kind
to awake at morning with insights of spirits
I will sleep this night and await the dream
Of remaining a patriot with a soul in flight
To arise each morning
and go through the day
for those other things
I have returned with the tired back of the street
to sleep
and again dream the dreams of the land
and talk of wadding the storms or clichés like it.

Jumoke Verissimo

Jumoke Verissimo is a Nigerian poet and writer. Her first book, I Am Memory, has won some literary awards in Nigeria. Some of her poems are in translation in Italian, Norwegian , French, Japanese, Chinese, and Macedonian. She was born on 26 December, 1979

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F for Figs by Jumoke Verissimo

F for Figs

You tell me certain foods are for gods,
a taste and my powers may abound too.
I have eaten no figs, but I have longed
though I always kept your thoughts in tethers,
tied to the root of the land I have loved
and like you I found figs are fruit for the gods
that in dreams men can get fed a kind
to awake at morning with insights of spirits
I will sleep this night and await the dream
Of remaining a patriot with a soul in flight
To arise each morning
and go through the day
for those other things
I have returned with the tired back of the street
to sleep
and again dream the dreams of the land
and talk of wadding the storms or clichés like it.

Jumoke Verissimo

Jumoke Verissimo is a Nigerian poet and writer. Her first book, I Am Memory, has won some literary awards in Nigeria. Some of her poems are in translation in Italian, Norwegian , French, Japanese, Chinese, and Macedonian. She was born on 26 December, 1979

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The Refuge of the Refugee by Jumoke Verissimo

The Refuge of the Refugee

In the trial of your cauldron heart
you may boil the stone
that burdens Africa into alcohol,
If I were to dream of meeting you on the waters,
I’ll turn you away from an ocean of trafficked debates
so even if ships are left without captains or you,
there would still be a future sailing into place
And as you stay at home like shells on a beach
couched in that language that’s spread on sands?
I’m inside your dream where you are awake,
though you’re eating the sounds of a lover’s snore
and retiring your ears from honks and street rustles
You can dream in your dream if you want to
the bed this night is not a place for sleep,
I will tell the world your tale.
I’ve entered your dream to meet solitude;
roll up your blanket and embrace some angst.

Jumoke Verissimo

Jumoke Verissimo is a Nigerian poet and writer. Her first book, I Am Memory, has won some literary awards in Nigeria. Some of her poems are in translation in Italian, Norwegian , French, Japanese, Chinese, and Macedonian. She was born on 26 December, 1979

Whole Fragments by Jumoke Verissimo

Whole Fragments
For Labyrinths

On this deluge of sparseness
have my tendrils split the scales of their twining
far-far, into a distance unforeseen in the mind of mystics.

I have sampled learning from these labyrinths' secret; preserved,
drizzles of musings resisting
the heats of collective amnesia.

What if he had rained more pieces of magic sapphire?
that Okigbo
that heritage of an unborn.

Now I pore into that least of his less
discourses of all those,
I-read-him, I-read-what-looks-like-him,
I-knew-who-knew-him, I-knew-what-read-like-him.

Words of wishes have gathered greatness
into a will to swindle time,
or break wind one that carries its smell into a trillion myth
in memory of a memory that stays a memory

In yearnings I hear Silence

driving ignorance into a compulsion of assumptions
what if
renders itself an anthem, that torments our desires.

I pray and watch for Distances

But Heavensgate is a fiction when our longings are unfulfilled
how can
is the incomprehensiveness we welded a man's worth with.

I wait to break these Limits

If only I could trail this Path of Thunder

Jumoke Verissimo

Jumoke Verissimo is a Nigerian poet and writer. Her first book, I Am Memory, has won some literary awards in Nigeria. Some of her poems are in translation in Italian, Norwegian , French, Japanese, Chinese, and Macedonian. She was born on 26 December, 1979