“Self-Adulation as a Note Accompanied with a Bouquet of Feathers” is one of two surreal & spiritual poems by Wale Ayinla in our Fall 2018 issue.

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TODAY, MY BODY FLOATS IN MAGENTA AIR;
and everything around me is falling
like the words rolled under mother’s sleeves.
Imagine that I am returning to a fever;
of green grass soaked in typhoid bedspread.
My sight tightens mother’s lips
as music. Frail fingers squeeze
her palms into a collage of dark hooks
and sirens, while the syringe buries itself.
Sometimes I feel like I might fold the night
into my armpit and run the length of the
city as a ghost, nevertheless, something draws me
back to my mother’s words like a magnet;
like an oath. (Never leave a widow opened
as a window.) A chimney of old wears
sewn on skin made with footprints.
I hold this memory firmly the same way
God tucks his secrets above the sky
under His soles. One day I will
hold a country and name it dreams.
Look at me the way you look a river
traveling with your face with words
holding you to a grudge. Do you see me
holding the hands of a father who is a heaven
away? Come, as a river paddling the body
into a shipwreck. I live here.

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WALE AYINLA writes from the ancient city of Abeokuta in Nigeria. His work appears or is forthcoming in Takahe, Kalahari Review, Vagabond City, The Rising Phoenix, Expound, and Dwarts. He is @Wale_Ayinla on Twitter and the founding editor of Dwarts Magazine.