TWO POEMS

POTHOS

Suppose my bones could grow
so long and my flesh
swell so much that Heaven
would become my bedroom
and the sky, my floor.
Suppose we humans could
become nothing bigger
than clusters of ants
crawling in corners
and walls of wardrobes.
Suppose I could birth
light and darkness
and my breath could
make a heart function,
I would make my bones
and your blood speak
a common language.

HIMEROS BLUES

For M.

There is a boy and a girl in the story.
Because, the story is roofed with a darkening sky,
she waits on her friends, together they hurry
past the cashew tree you have been waiting. You sigh,

bend fingers, bring the evening into the dormitory.
Voices made of steel, low and high, low and high;
other boys help dismantle your mountain of worry.
There is a boy and a girl in the story.

Now, the story is roofed with a baby-toothed sky,
yet, she waits on her friends, together they hurry
past the cashew tree you have been waiting. You cry.
Walking, only you—a boy—left in the story.

—

D.M. Aderibigbe is from Nigeria. He’s the author of a chapbook, In Praise of Our Absent Father Akashic 2016.) He has received fellowships and honours from the James Merrill House, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, OMI International Arts Center, Ucross Foundation, Jentel Foundation, Dickinson House, and Boston University where he finished his MFA in creative writing, and received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. His poems appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, jubilat, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Review, River Styx and elsewhere. His poetry received a 2017 Puschcart prize special mention. His first manuscript is a finalist for the 2015 and 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets