two gods kissing & a portrait of Sango's anger

By Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau

i blindfold myself & hold your anger against the sky
let your mouth be a pillar of ash, a brothel of flames
 
dying midway along a throat of vapour, obatala
at the feet of a river, calling bodies to drown before
 
ghosts.
 
                                that way, a god asks for a body
laid the way a coin faces the sky
 
& they sing of wetness, lips turning like fishes
the road opens
                aganju fucks obatala behind a barn
& a boy falls from the sky
                                               
                                                sango thinks
of history as a lover drowning in a river
 
as the making of fire                       the god
of thunder rages like storms before the
 
beginning of rain.

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Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau is a documentary photographer and poet from Nigeria. He is an Assistant Editor at Animal Heart Press and a Contributing Editor at Barren Magazine; he writes on loss, boy child abuse, and absence. His works have been featured in Gaze, Mojave Heart, Glass Poetry, Honey & Lime Lit, Geometry, Agbowo Art and elsewhere. He is the runner-up for the Sehvage Poetry Prize, 2019.