Adura Ojo
Adura Ojo is the author of a full poetry collection, Life is a woman breaking eggs, and Mania, a chapbook published in August 2020. Her work is featured at Slice, The Rialto, Cultural Weekly, Acumen, and a host of other publications both online and in print.
/Cake…and here’s one I made earlier
here’s one I made earlier
shared it some place
you kept locked
I’ve still got some
I could’ve called it 23
I love Adele and
that would’ve been funny
oh shitty twenties (let’s make a wish blow out the candles)
exorcise the ghost
icing melting
everything we do
that’s what we do
we do this in fragments I know
the song that takes too much sugar
you know the verse coming
and you sing it
it won’t make sense
dipping and melting
song after song
unless it’s love
don’t tell me how to speak
my language is mine
you glide over my tongue
when you know love
I was a city once
collected in streets
now I change bins
for satin sheets
sin-city synchronicity
I did what I had to do
when you’re done labelling
attach it to a postscript
fifteen
a place to get stuck after fourteen
dumb shot taught me everything I hold in my holster
and I’m damn grateful (the city too)
we agreed a night war
feet apart in dreams
friends at dawn
morning surfing a shadow
and it’s been said
25 is tricky
ask Adele
and a whole bunch of sisters
my heart fought for seconds
until
I learned the power of free
was one
I ride crop circles
to sleep at night
I keep count so I’d
walk the field alive
coffee & honey
citrus & icing
my body broke last night
this time it’s all me
unlost damsel’s way to say
bikini line don’t grow on trees
limbs all over
hanging fruit I know
white peaks in fragments
swallow this street
and its bins. who cares
for showers on this jewel?
sky knows the clock
coughs up rainbows
get- going ribbons
on the rise of dawn
the way fingers in cloud go
finding words
plucking, pruning
of this song
notes back-riding
shimmering tank
icing’s petting
making music
I mark my tomb
like I mark time
like resurrection
wakes a night
/Mine
I’ve long been ready
yesterday
it was already
when I picked my skin
and wore it backwards
alongside the unpacked
chair in the hallway
this language of space
burst into song
it is not for the vulture
waiting to feast
on this language of skin
this language of skin
sits in thrill
tiara waiting
it is not a vulture’s habit
to don an adventure
steeped in life
not a vulture
to eat this life
alive.
/Bird
A shadow of frost
in this place the bird is sun
and truth to be drawn
let this be a day
that blue birds line up proudly
paint the tongue-fly green
song of Solomon
verse for every stiletto
about to give head
half a moon and luck
the aircraft stays with nightfall
and dawn culls like snow
/Sea – Picture – Blue 1/19/21
Is dawn waiting tonight?
are trees half awake
ten minutes to midnight?
If trees drank wine
tonight would be a drunk dream
all bright color dare-eager faithful
tugged safely
in the corner of the mind
midnight to clover
morning door to horseshoe
heel to hill
sea picture blue
/Ship
intro:
- the neighbour
- her downstairs
- the petter
- dawn
I said ships out loud/ looked it up
ships became ship/
like the story of us in a bottle/ breaking dusk/ making dawn
her downstairs came breaking with no locks
in this space/ freedom/ an easy gaze
the neighbour swore by silence
the number of times we laughed
must have been one cabin stored away
pirates feast on ships they don’t own/ all the time
he petted as if to say/ don’t cry now
here’s your present all aboard
I’ll see you tomorrow/ that was what we said
that was what we said/ I’ll see you tomorrow
each other in our separate cabins
I was already sailing
like the story of us in a bottle
breaking dusk/ making dawn