Two Poems – Muiz Opeyemi Ajayi

Gardener

today I wrote about flowers & everything that blossoms
today I wrote about birds & corals
that flutter & glitz like
calligraphed sunrise in the heart of Ọ̀run

once I brought a fair floret home
& I wouldn’t know if it were a middle mist red
but I dug into an old flowerpot
long gone to pot at the yard anyway

like the cringed stalk inside
brown and hopelessly shriveled on its knees &
there I quarter way buried the òdòdó
I still couldn’t verify wasn’t the toxicodendron
radicans I read on a blog a couple weeks prior

maybe it’s an empirical test of how faith turns cut
flower into seeds germinating on smudgy soil &
sprouting anthers & stigmas and sepals & petals

I’ve chosen to bore myself alone
with the knowledge of how the fair floret faired
on the 2nd 3rd 4th & sixth day I for
got to check or water

for the ears appreciates
the melancholic soulfulness of a dirge
until the mouth tastes it

but today I write
about the sun & everything
that eventually sets today I write about flowers
& everything that subsequently withers
in the placid face of neglect

Sculpting the sphere in my biology

Father is a gardener is one subtle way
of saying the earth hijacked my brother’s
body. It’s a marvel how I trick myself
into believing the tuberoses by my doormat

are properties of mine, likewise pomegranates,
dusty poetry journal on the shelf, cupboard-shaped
TV in my one-room apartment where dubbed movies
watch our sleepy heads at night. Trust me,

I’ve read my Carnegie enough to know grave
is denouement for this emptiness submerging me. Damn me
if grave isn’t a prelude to grief & the latter mere seedling
reincarnating into the former. Loss quizzes me into pondering

if we belong to earth because we’re made from dust,
or own it ’cause we thread its scalp & cultivate its weave.
Once, mother employed a clergyman to exorcise this barrenness
that sits in my chest, which they’re convinced is an incarcerator

of mine. I am convinced I’m fertile, however, as my throat blossoms
into chrysanthemums and dirge songs. & despite the apparent
delusions, I am unwavered the earth is my belonging;
is my brother biodegrading into himself all over again.

Muiz Opeyemi Ajayi, a young poet and writer, is a fresh Law undergraduate of the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. He writes conventional & unorthodox poetry and prose on diverse subjects including personality conflict, contradictions and uncertainties. He has works published or forthcoming on Fiery Scribe Review, Brittle Paper, Spillwords, Pawners Paper, Sledgehammer lit and elsewhere. Asides Law and Literature, he’s intrigued by sport and music.

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