Goodness Olanrewaju Ayoola is a Nigerian poet and teacher of English. His poetry has appeared in Indian Periodicals, Leaves of Ink, Deepwater Literary Journal, Brittle Paper, Yourone phone call, Ric Journal and elsewhere.
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My compound as a portraiture
Has no architectural comeliness, or a frame of appeal.
Is survival. Is void of no particular pigment
Pronunciation, save the dullness after cement.
Unnamed.
Is sitting in the ghetto; knows the ghetto; knows all the
Drama: the wisps of smoke from hemps, the intensity of rum’s redolence, the screams from
Girls molested on dead nights, girls fought over by rogues at a close beer parlor,
The loud jamz
From the barber’s shop, the idiosyncrasy of the mad man’s cubicle a feet away,
From the neighbor who on public
Holidays makes his Home Theatre scream into our walls
With indifference. With abandon. The woman adjacent my door
Is a scarecrow, she sings early fears in French to the maid she
Exploits; whom sleep has found elusive. Once, my family was smoked out,
Naked by the flames from a broken hookah in the harem
Just behind the window’s blindness.
Knows enough, without so much difference: the claims of incessant flood
And the Landlord’s rush for rent
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