I REVERT TO THE EARTH & METAMORPHOSE

​Rebirth is a vicious possession, the earth 
recycling breathe
Always pregnant, yawning belly, a wound
full of mad, bound creatures waiting 
to escape into the songless sky 
The earth, new and so wild 
with yearning. I fall to its wetness, its soils
hungrily ingest my body, 
slowly too, like a caress
Where are you taking me, you gaping mouth? 
I grow swollen with putrid death
My wounds tear open, birth a flower
My petals flutter, flutter away in the mourning wind
What would you name this offering where you are from?

Today, my body becomes strange / to me
I pinch off a hair of flesh, relearn 
how to engrave a poem (myself) into dust;
Each artless, desperate caress from my blind 
fingers yearning for light    echoes through
my body / as though I’m hollow
As though there’s nothing inside me 
but thin air.
How to fill something so hollow?
Every day, I awaken to my body  
's  strangeness, its language 
I stutter / I'm the travelling, swollen river
collected in the bosom of the lost. I do not
know what my boundaries are; where I begin, 
where I'm going I    struggle with containment I 
cannot say I'll make the journey whole I pour 
too much give too much remake myself empty. This
river has overflown its banks. 

I want to blossom so beautiful I 
hold on to the sun and its tongue, I do not let go--
Let it burn me a little, make me vivid.
I want to live loud (again) so,
I accept the water, let it drown me.
I think I'm addicted to being dust, remade into water–
Something about their consuming, endless boundlessness
Give me over to the void.





(LIFE IS) A POT FULL OF DEATHS

I collect the raindrops on my tongue, tasting 
the sourness of history, of memory
All the deaths it has watered
Life is a gathering of small deaths;
The last wisp of sweetened smoke from the end of a burning incense,
The evanescence of a shape prayed into the clouds, 
The flutter of shadowed birds floating home,
The fading of a grandmother('s voice)
As she regales her children, 
new faces painted by the tender touch of moonlight,
Of all the deaths she has, 
Cradled in her ìgbànu, tied to the folds of her wrapper
Lingering on her belongings 
Choking, beckoning 
Teasing her feet of land.

Death calls and
Child, listen, you must tame it
Go to all the funerals 
let death claim you, sit with it, let it permeate your body, smell like it, listen to its song
Help wash the dead, 
And when it's time to greet them goodnight
The frozen flesh of their palms open, to cradle your parting elegies
sift through the river 
of memories and pluck out, cup 
a prayer, a gift
This is your offering.




Aishat Yahkub is a Nigerian creative, poet, art lover and medical student. Her poems appear in Brittle paper, Agbowó, Variety pack, Fiery scribe review and elsewhere.
Her works explore the fluidity of identity, language and portrayal of "home", through her cast of outcasts.
When it's silent, she practices stillness and escapes into dreams.

​