Iyanuoluwa Adenle

Inaugural winner of the Kofi Awoonor Poetry Prize

Babe

after Keith Leonard’s ‘Valentine’

It is Ash Wednesday, babe.

I like to think all desires are removable

like the parts of us that can be dismantled

by something as kind as a simple clubbing to death

your stubborn head, grateful for a new feeling

even as I am seated right across from you

I wonder what cruel portion this is: to love a needy woman like me

clicking our heels, hand-in-hand,

like kids with no solid fear of death,

maybe it’s just an idea when I say I want to die in your arms

what parts of us can be put together

by the sprinkling of the holy water

the haphazard scatterings of the sign of the cross

on our shinning foreheads

filled with careful thoughts

how to not hurt each other for eternity.

This is the eternity we get, babe

Bio: Iyanuoluwa Adenle is a poet from Nigeria. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Cosmonauts Review, Blue Earth Review, 20.35 Africa, Olongo, Kissing Dynamite, Lolwe, Onejacar, Empty Mirror, African Writer, Kalahari Review, and elsewhere.