Of Saints and Sinners
Last week at the market,
a man stole bread & they
buried him within a mortar
of curses & they pounded him
with fists & clubs & pestles,
till he folded into petals
of crimson gloom, choking
on a stale breath, till he morphed
into an unbecoming singing
nocturnes to nightmares
in a house of darkness. This man
was a battered drum & the mob
was a band of furious drummers.
This body must know death, I say
wear him the belt of an old tire
& bathe him in a rain of fuel.
But let only one person, sinless
like a newborn dove, carry
the embers of this war,
let him throw fire upon the ruin
of another, chanting ‘Holy, Holy’
as the cleansing fire of God’s wrath
purges the soul of the sinner
because his, is as white
as charcoal.
A Boy Sings the Song of Genesis
a boy held broken words
in his mouth like wildberries,
his mouth beating a beadless
shekere into the nectar burst
of silence. he lingered
behind the horizons of a world
where ka-bi-ye-si was god
hiding a flower in his mouth.
I say god when really I mean
the boy’s father, flower
when really I mean storm.
god swallowed the boy into
a flower and his tongue took
a sabbatical at the sound of
thunder.
now,
the boy hears the growl
stuck in god’s throats
before he hears the music
of silence bearing memories
of loss like the aftertaste
of a bitter fruit. at genesis,
the boy was mute, even now
his voice is a broken bead
so a bird tries to string it
together with a chirp, chirp
the bird loves the boy
& vice versa
but the boy is on a search
for the origin of music
& genesis is a memory
of silence.
Biography
Timi Sanni’s works have appeared or are forthcoming in Radical Art Review, Writers Space Africa, Praxis Magazine and elsewhere. He was selected for the SprinNG Writers’ Fellowship in 2018 and recently won the SprinNG Annual Poetry Contest. He is also an editor at Kalopsia lit and Upwrite magazine. Twitter: @timisanni