A Small Bridge
My body becomes a room no one lives in
while I wait to read it to myself
at the courtyard, standing before
a plant wrapped in my stare
lips on a yellowing leaf caught
in the jazz of branches, I swim
through the lingering chlorophyll
of a fading tree, leaking
a brackish desire, struck out
of an evening sky dust floating
softer than air, the body becomes a room
that opens a small bridge that unlocks a small
world, the tree a skeleton
with the right amount of clorophyll
to photosynthesize, what is going seaward
circumvents the air, the warmth of children
playing, the sound of people
dismantling a canopy, to be free
means to hold everything, dreams, lovers
and still hold nothing, something like the moon
pressing over a lake, finally showing
her face, half my scars
are like my father’s, my grief still floats
in my eyes, a body becomes a room
full of silence
Come inside
Pilgrim, sit beside me,
in an uncluttered pail,
I shall serve you
my grief as food,
eyes’ salty water
as wine. Be ready
like fingers inside a
hollow pocket:
you’ll know the inside
of my body,
the sidewalk
everyone tramps,
a lock the welcomes
many keys knows
sometimes keys
do not listen. Blunt or sharp
the teeth unfasten
me, the ephemral
minutes of resistance,
a wax with no candle-
thread to burn;
come, pilgrim—a firehose
Saddiq Dzukogi studied at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. He has poems featured or forthcoming in literary publications such as: New Orleans Review, African American Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Juked, The Poetry Mail, Chiron Review, Vinyl Poetry, ELSEWHERE LIT’s anthology of contemporary African poetry, The Volta, Construction and Welter, among others. He was a guest at the 2015 Writivism Festival in Uganda as well as at the Nigeria-Korea Poetry Feast in the same year. Saddiq is the Poetry Editor of online journal, Expound, and a three times finalist in The Association of Nigerian Author’s Poetry Prize. Saddiq lives in Minna, Nigeria. He can be found @saddiqdzukogi.