by Michael Agunbiade
Variant Literature

i sat on the top of a kopje
listening to a part of me on the radio.
my mother had just returned
from another war & once again
she did not survive.
the man on the radio said
i will still die
whether or not i bury the boy on my shirt.
it is nearly two years since i came out
& my room already has a memory of blood.
i guess the man i am currently fucking
must have felt the same way
he couldn’t find his hands
while his father ran a blade over him.
who would watch his son
being swallowed by a man
& not burn down a city?
drown into water a decade of ships?
it takes a man to leave home
and never return. it takes courage
to kneel on the altar of a gun
while God is watching.
yesterday a boy rode
a bike towards me
& what we did in the end was remarkable.
what do you think i mean?
that he never taught me
how to ride a bike instead
how to ride a man into a room
suppose one of us stood
in the nude of hunger
like an unlit lamppost.
suppose it is is raining
and i put out all my boats
as if its arrival was all i wanted.

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Michael Agunbiade is a Nigerian poet who writes from the small hole of his room. He is a Sprinng Writing Fellow, two-time Best of the Net nominee, winner of the 2024 Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize, and a finalist in the 2024 Wanjohi Prize for African Poetry. His works have appeared in The Shore Poetry, Brittle Paper, Feral Journal, Variant Literature, Bodega, Poet Lore, & elsewhere.