Five Poems by Taiwo Hassan

The Noise

on mornings like these, the boy/ in a man/ journeys into his throat/ hoping/ to find a voice he once lost/ to call the A'dhan and not stutter/ a mosque is once again a reminder of the things he could let out, and wudhu, a salve. diving into subhi feels like arriving at a market/ high hopes/ a mix of caution and excitement/ an open heart/ and running hands. he feels the stillness of the night sweep through him, its essence carefully picking his qualms apart, this is how he becomes another synonym for a pieced puzzle at every sujud. as he lifts his eyes, then hands and his almost dried lips to recite suratul-ul-fatihah, he tries, he prays those worries into dust too. he does his best to flow with the tides of each verse but a stone struggles to define his spirit. how do you tell willing wings to melt into the skies when each of their feathers is a testament of elements unburnt, of dreams undeciphered? perhaps today, this heaviness will melt into the colours of the ground as his forehead tastes its coldness. perhaps today, he too will be the subject of a miracle.

Things That Don’t Change About Home

I'm here again, and this time, I slip in doused in the night’s color. Everything here feels the same. Nostalgia peers at me through my neighbors’ glass windows. I try to remember almost everyone—the black cat that sleeps on the mosque’s roof, the frequent heads at my barbershop, the voices that greet me at every corner—I recognize the shapes of their faces and colors that adorn them. Beautiful Nubia’s Ohun Oju Nri flows from the radio into the air and I feel the chilly wind sifting it into softness. My mother's embrace is the opposite of a crescent, a stark contrast to the many things that still stand bright in this house. Our lantern glows brighter by the minute, and winged termites try to find a home on its frail glass—flying reminders of a rainy yesterday and a less hungry tomorrow. Their wings begin to fall, and I remember a time when these seasonal limbs littered my childhood with joy. How glorious it must be to know the length of your purpose and master the height of your flight. The aroma of beans and onions pushes me into the kitchen, and I meet hunger staring through the red spaces of a burning charcoal stove. In a split second, my eyes settle on my mother's gaze, and I smell what's coming—the Adhan for Isha, followed by silence, then a probe into what mosque will soften my tense feet—Táyélolú, ẹ lọ kírun o—I watch as sleep pools in her eyes and flows through her yawns. This is where she tightens her ìró, then her resolve, rebukes the devil, and calls for a filled kettle. Some things never change about home, despite.

For Boys Who Left

memory/ is leading you/ more/ and more/ towards home/ and you protest/ till your bones/ turn brittle/ but your ground/ hungers for that rain/ and petrichor hunts/ for your nose/ till their pores/ become prey/ your head/ and your heart/ battles for/ what was once/ out of reach/ imagine/ desire/ as a cemetery/ of ripe wounds/ exhumed/ stray bones/ assembling/ for answers/ think about/ need/ as a throat filled/ with melodies/ without a resonance/ to reach/ how do you/ rearrange/ these realities/ to not reflect/ what you ran from/ where your shadows failed/ to remain silent/ and you had to/ squeeze your dreams/ through the/ holes in/ your shut door/ where you convinced your legs/ that their foot/ and toes/ are fast enough/ to outrun/ the past/ now/ you’re a man/ who has learned/ how to stitch/ together/ the stolen parts/ of his boyhood/ a nomad/ that has arranged/ a way back home/ on the wings/ of a pigeon/ you’ve mastered/ how wet hands/ can house a miracle/ and how hollow bones/ can fold/ into earnest pleas/ you've found/ your way around/ an empty kettle/ and syncopated movement/ you've sharpened/ the tips of your ears/ to pick up/ all the whispers/ capable of/ being cultivated/ into a siren/ a special kind of noise/ God will never ignore.

Arson

It's all done and said.
A house now burns and ashes spill, a drop after the other. I wander, I
wonder if all those memories shattered into shards,
if that river can carry away the pain, if even covered in soot & shades of black
and white, that wall won't wail, if what sings a dirge now didn't always mutter an ode to death. I adorn my face
with questions about now and then. I see hands and water trying to salvage what's left of this rubble, & I ask
myself if the track beneath those eyes, too, is an effort to hold on to what's left of what once was.

of voids and my mother's radio

I've never gotten used to the gritty cries of my mother's radio.
Shoves dissolve into pushes—calculated movements—silence breaks

& with each split second, she becomes a familiar channel, switching,
in between short breaths of relief and another feeling, one

I never seem to dissect,
I never seem to release from the many cadavers
I carry, unnamed.

I catch a whiff of another colour on her skin, a shade
different from the almost coffee-like one she carries

& for a moment, weightless isn't what her eyes hold.
I'm thrown into an abyss, with walls that scream nothing but silence.

I dive in, but those echoes become chains & this vessel,
far from being a wrecking ball.

Hit pause,    rewind.     perhaps
nostalgia can be a balm for these burns.

My head hits the past, windows become a door, it's morning
& dawn doesn't knock before replacing the colour of these walls.

This time, I remember the cocktail of a cuckoo's chirps
& a familiar song on her radio, the honey, the power it balanced.

blue replaces the taste of blood my lips carry—sweet—
heavy enough to morph this tongue into a scale.

I forgot to ask, can her song on this radio try to fill a void
without turning into one itself?
How long will my mother shed these colours?
How long till her teabag oozes its last juice?

I'm trying to be a locked box, to hold these silent noises in,
to stop this calm ocean from racing into chaos.

I can't stop thinking about those eyes, I can't,
What do you do when your body hums the blade's melody?

Do you let each pore on your skin sing back & struggle to find
a key, wondering what miracle lives in the depths of this harmony?

Or do you bring its tip to teach you the art of spilling? of melting
all that's left in this vessel of blood and bones, of tears and fears, of

everything you see in your mother's eyes, into dust
& watch yourself be a songbird, in the skies of oblivion.

Perhaps one day, you would journey into those pupils,
again and arrive as a testament of hope, of healing.



Taiwo Hassan is a writer of Yorùbá descent, a poet, and a vocalist. A 4x Best Of The Net Nominee, his poems have appeared in Uncanny Magazine, trampset, Kissing Dynamite, Lucent Dreaming, The Shore, Brittle Paper, Dust Poetry Magazine, Ice Floe Press, Wizards In Space, and several other places. His first chapbook, Birds Don't Fly For Pleasure, was published by River Glass Books.