First, a cry. Or first, a language, or first, you break your mind into dreams and wishes and hope before returning to gather the shards and rubbles everything you had became. That’s how we return to homelessness, hand in hand grieving every way this city has broken us. Trust me, the most beautiful part of your body is where there’s light. So, think of fireflies, think of the sky, think of where we all go to fill voids, think of white spaces, too. Soon, fire will plunder a place and there will be light there, too — light to mourn or purify the havoc of rust this place is digging into us. Too much strains and snaps. Too much loss to breathe. Think of moths to flames. Think of poems traipsing to end but cannot in this airtight story, because metaphors are longing to break out of homes with too little windows. Think of the windows as our bodies.
Orpheus
First, a cry. Or first, a language, or first, you break your mind into dreams and wishes and hope before returning to gather the shards and rubbles everything you had became. That’s how we return to homelessness, hand in hand grieving every way this city has broken us. Trust me, the most beautiful part of your body is where there’s light. So, think of fireflies, think of the sky, think of where we all go to fill voids, think of white spaces, too.
Issue 2
https://manyworlds.place/issue-2/muhammed-olowonjoyin/
Muhammed Olowonjoyin [TPC III] is a Nigerian poet. Winner of the 2023 Dawn Prize for Poetry, his poems have featured or are forthcoming in Gutter Magazine, Pepper Coast Lit, Olney Magazine, Stanchion, Poetry Column NND, Brittle Paper, The Sunlight Press, and elsewhere. A Best Small Fictions 2023 finalist, he won an Honorary Mention in the inaugural Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature. He tweets @APerSe_.