Two poems by Ojo Taiye

after sunset

i am listing everything I know
legwork becomes the popularity of the sun
spelling your name backwards means going into a trance
the sky is falling from my mouth and stars
baking flapjacks in my paws
after sunset things begin:
you listen to a radio backward
you become a windmill and a road
you hide secrets in the sky
you open a small castle full of moths
you paint a wall gray and stand majestically
in the cup of ancient rains
you talk about muscle-memories that invade bedrooms in the winter
you wear yellow hands
you grow towards indoor causation and solipsism
you become a gangster in a dog town and dance blue
with long disjointed feathers

SKY AND PEACE

(for Peace Nkanta)

the world is a ball of lint
hidden in your bellybutton
i would very much like to stand
at the end of your finger
like a pier and fish
for canoes and yellow dreams

i forgot to tell you
in me a shipwreck sleeps
how do your carry birds
and rivers at the same time
i am a ghost grappling all
the abandoned shoes
that my loneliness could carry

lead me to my lost shadow
in the dark
the skies are falling
all over my mouth
the trees are quivering again
let me be found beneath an upside
down spoon with olives on my lips