After the Night of the Massacre, Tollgate, 21st October 2020

though dust yield to yellow with time,
the clockwork at the high tower is
still misted white, answering the songs
of dawn. The mosque mourns, calling
the dead to prayer. Somewhere else,
a priest preaches sanctity to ghosts
of believers. The church hymns crawl,
led by the reins of white garments,
towards a river raped into crimson red.
Unrequited, the morning quietened
into blisters. In the dream before, I keep
falling from faith. I must deliver myself
from the tender hands of death.
From the tender hands of death,
I must walk into the morning with roses
blooming in my mouth. But then,
Isn’t it the world’s decision to damn my
little life, lame as the lamb before Abraham’s
knife? Again & again, the body becomes bitten
by bile, that damn elegy signalling
survival. I must be grateful that, unlike
these cadavers, I survived the men—
these fucking happy trigger nigga.
The survival, too heavy a silence—
heavy as the burden of unanswered
prayers to heaven. As birds hovers,
bearing witness to the mourning
of a mother over the murder of his
only son. Forgive me, I must have
forgot the bullet is still lodged somewhere
in my heart. I swear, I will hold
god by his neck, & ask if he never heard
my plea when the gun began its
faithful work. Faith disappoints where
Death does the damning. To survive this world,
you must have faith as small as a
mustard seeds. But tell me, what is
enough to survive death, to survive a
country complacent in homicide?
A room small enough to fit a silence
filled- body? In time, the bullet pardons
everything except the body it kills.
Or perhaps, the bullet remembers
everything except the one who shot the shot.
Either way, I am hovering, like an ant
on water, hoping I do not drown in
these ocean of corpses. This is my
desperation playing a trick against me.
I listen to my breath again. It glistens,
white as an invented lie. As usual,
there’s something in the dark,
waiting to be named. The poem is waiting
to be written again: A surge of bullet fledged flesh.
Blood filled dawn & the air, a pretense—
as if death is not the lack of hunger
misunderstood. Or perhaps, we look beyond
these streets and let history recounts
a caravel sailing away into the red ruined
sea, pointing to the first blood that claims the city.
The loud sound of the guns can still be heard
& this time, it’s gods against believers.
how often do you ask the living to
stay in the dark. Tell me again, how
often must the dead ask to own a
name it cannot answer? The orchestra
continues with its dark song—
ruined roses asking what petals their dreams
are made of—glass or glass?

Ridwan Fasasi

Ridwan Fasasi, SWAN I, is a Nigerian editor, writer, and art curator of Yoruba Descent. He curated the Sokoto Book and Art Festival 2025. A Pushcart Prize and 2x Best of the Nominee whose works have appeared on ANMLY Lit, Chestnut Review, Frontier Poetry, Euonia Review, Akpata, Lucent Dreaming, Strange Horizon, Hindsight Creative, among others. He is the winner of the 2024 Labari Prize for Poetry and the Ignyte Award for Best Speculative Poetry. His works have also been shortlisted for the SprinNg Annual Poetry Contest, Gbemisola Adeoti Poetry Prize, Lucky Jefferson Poetry & Prose Contest, Splendor of Dawn Poetry Contest, SOBAF Poetry Slam, and also longlisted for the 2024 Akachi Prize for Literature. He is currently a reader at Anomalous Press and works as a reviewer at D’lit Review. Find him on Twitter (sorry X) @Ibn_Yushau44.