Annunciation
by: ADESIYAN OLUWAPELUMI, TPC XI
In the name of things that refuse to be named, I call you Àdúmmádàn which in your foreign tongue means beauty with no scars. Aríkẹ́ adé mi, àwọn nǹkan wà tí ẹnu fẹ́ sọ, ṣùgbọ́n ọ̀rọ̀ kò tọ́ (there are things the mouth wishes to name but cannot cut the right words). The cutting is devoid of knife. The knife is devoid of cutting. Maybe language is flesh too. Without the sacrilege of blood, without the body. Especially, without the body, like how your eyes are two hungry, gaping mouths that cannot be fed with yearning. My love, though ever abounding is never enough. Àjoké, there are things love can't save us from. Like this night, foreboding with loss yet we choose to dance as moonlights in defiance of the sky. Our legs glissade in the grass, the streams from our skin navigate the earth to rise as ether. We decree touch and call it the lamplight of rain. There is thunder, almost croaking as a toad. The lightning is what strikes body against body, igniting a fire. Sometimes, love is not water. Sometimes, love is the fire that razes the forest. Sometimes, love is woodsmoke. Sometimes, love is the beginning of war. If only love truly ended wars, Abíkẹ́, I will don my khaki shorts and match to the battlefield. Because all is war in love and all is love in war. When our eyes meet, they will not resist. We will be a convergence. You, a map. I, a compass. Such as the old wisdom the astrologers used to tell the bearings and positions of planets. I imagine us to be planets, revolving around the solar axis of each other. I do not know what the scientists call this but our love is science—a making. It begins as an hypothesis, then an experiment and when our bodies touch, it becomes a law.
ADESIYAN OLUWAPELUMI, TPC XI, is a medical student, poet, essayist & Poetry Editor of Fiery Scribe Review from Nigeria. Winner of the Gbemisola Adeoti Poetry Prize (2025), An Unserious Collective, Adroit Journal Summer Program, HUES Foundation & SprinNG Writers’ Fellow, he & his works are featured in The Republic, Electric Literature, Only Poems, 20.35 Africa, Isele Magazine, Poetry Sango-Ota, A Long House, Brittle Paper, Fantasy Magazine, Poet Lore, Tab Journal, Poetry Wales & elsewhere. His chapbook “Mouthful with Cinders” was selected by Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes for the APBF New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Box-set Series (Akashic Books, forthcoming 2025).