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Two Poems
by Aishat Yahkub
We Are all Little Hungry Rivers
In this ritual you,
Lift your trembling hands to cup your ringing ears
Listen to the incessant heartbeat
Of the ocean's ancient song
Wonder,
If everything came from the water
And water is molten hunger, relentlessly seeking, engulfing
then maybe
You inherited this
Insatiate, yawning want
From the root of the river that flows
through you,
That you named home.
Go down to the river, greet its restless face drenched in sunlight
Marvel at how your veins pour prayer, breathe
into each other
How you have to be emptied,
to be poured into. Dream
you revert to water
Feel your body melt, droop
fluttering flesh
tear away, open to the mouth of water
And sense the water open in welcome, ripple into you—
Consume and be consumed
Give yourself over,
Let it carry you, claim you
whole. Undammed
so you do not know of stillness;
To be still is to sink.
Wash onto abandoned shores
Kiss their virgin sands,
stretch and reach and fill all things emptiness.
Here, drowning becomes floating becomes flowing
And you grow endless,
continuous;
Pouring, emptying, hungering…
The Travellers
The road awakens and beckons
eagerly, swallows you whole
Into its serpentine belly
The watery night it's complicit body
Its torment unites
your flesh, contorts to hold madness.
The road reveals it's strangeness, unleashes its secrets
How it eats up time into dust
So your past and future
all are lost in its mud
Give yourselves over, submit
let the road carry you, lead you
Breathe, allow yourselves be devastated
by it. Let the road pass
through you. Let it
Take from you
You'll still make the journey, battered.
The road is a gaping, festering wound that scars, pouring
into bodies, possesses
until it absorbs you and
you
become a manifestation of its hunger.
How it kneads and molds unto paths that take
and take from you.
You who dared to enter its mouth
Will not make it out whole
Or sane.
Bereaved, your mourning will be beautiful.
There's too much savagery on this path
towards light, towards home.
The road is not your friend
It ages,
breaks you; so a boy
Comes out a man, half-formed.
The road is made of noise and smoke and
so much thirst
A country unravels at the wild teeth of its road
Language weaves through
Like a wet, writhing tongue
Let there be chaos.
The road is endless and everything will be left
abandoned, silenced.
A hardened river,
The road is a grave for anything that does not yield
to be transported blind through its body.
The road lines stories in its belly
And its storytellers?
All are lost.
Aishat Yahkub is a young Nigerian creative, writer, poet, bookworm, art lover and overwhelmed medical student. Her poems have been published or forthcoming in Brittle paper, Agbowó, Visual Verse, Nightshade Lit and Juste Literary. Her works broadly explore the fluidity of identity, language and the portrayal of "home", through her cast of outcasts. When she's not reverentially appreciating exquisite poetry and art, she practices stillness and escapes into dreams. She's overcoming her mild social (media) anxiety by tweeting @AishatYahkub.
