Drowning the Boats

By the edge of a ferry boat

I let go of my earthly tether.

Whatever wishes to enter the listless

Waters and satisfy their thirst

Must come with its rampageous longing.

I, an i of conundrum memories, tear

All of my mothers’ pictures from my heart.

The way a gunshot plunges silence into the thick

Skin of life. I forget all my lovers, the way the living, inevitably

Forgets the dead. Pour each of them names into the waters

Murderous form—that what lifelessness threatens beauty like this?

I swear by the power of Allah, no dust dares cover the shame

Of the waters, no language thick enough to crack a throat

Can save its people. I unfurl from my insecurities, toil

Away from my steep despair, there’s a yacht almost

Seven silence away from my boat, there is another

Seven loneliness deep in the ocean’s tide.

The fortune of a hook rests on the unfortunateness

Of the fish’s wide mouth—     too curious to sought

What new flavor the bait holds, what water-god wants

A promenade before the waters wound?

I wish to slowly cover myself with the waters

The way whatever despair I swallow finds a way to heal me,

The way what failed at killing me, fails at making me suffer.

In my desperate longing for silence and struggle,

I bait. Myself.          What river dares swallow the bait

And hides the corpse

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Author: Abdulrazaq Salihu

Abdulrazaq Salihu, TPC I, is a Nigerian Writer and Performance Poet. A member of the Hill-Top Creative Arts Foundation, he has received Residencies from IWE Nigeria, Frances Thompson Writers Studio and is a 2025 Fellow at the LOATAD Black Atlantis. He won the Masks Poetry Award, LAP performance poetry prize, SOD, BKPW, and Poetry Archive contests. He’s the author of “Constellations” and “Hiccups” and has his chapbook “Quantum entanglements with notes on loss” forthcoming with Sundress Publication 2025. He has his works published/forthcoming with Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, Uncanny, Bacopa Literary Review, Strange Horizons, Stanchion, Consequence Forum, SoFloPoJo, Bracken Magazine, Poetry Quarterly and elsewhere. He tweets @Arazaqsalihu and instagram: abdulrazaq._salihu 

 

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