untitled gen-z poem for a country with the song of hell

“there's a country opening into a graveyard: in it,

there are boys, like me, surviving on metaphors.”

—adamu yahuza abdullahi

& it’s morning. like a psalmodic portrait of a body

in a graveyard, i pressed myself into the song of 

a country, learning the calligraphy of the wind 

and the echoes of what buried a boy in it whispers

& tinseling lyrics of reincarnated bodies—bloody like

mud. you wonder how every line

moonwalks a country into a song; it's     

the only way we’re reminded of how mother

wakes up every day to die, or how we die

every day to count the breaths, left of us.

there are tantalums in every breath we noose;

in each; we are burnt into fireflies

reviving to suck from her breast, a routine

tale of survival. last night, my brother walked

passed her ears to know more of how bodies

are said to be manipulated into the lyrics of 

the wind and he was strangled to the thirsty 

oesophagus of a tornado. i ride with my tongue, 

a whisper and i’m afraid there are ghosts [chitchatting]

in the territory of my words. there’re voices

so clear; mine has faded into a broken tune of a country’s

rhythm. of a country’s saxophone throat of scar. 

Abubakar Auwal is an award-winning teen author of two forthcoming chapbooks: Portrait of gods as Metaphors, 1st runner-up for the Nigeria Prize for Teen Authors (Poetry, 2024) and Portrait of Broken Metaphors; winner, Arting Arena Poetry Chapbook Contest (2024).