“Cup of Water” and Other Poems

by Abdulbasit Oluwanishola

I SIP MY SCAR WITH SACCHARINE 

for mom 

i swan into the ocean of memory through my Redmi A2+.

my right hand opens a door & ᴵthis poem lorries me 

into the night which bottled your breath.

ᴵᴵmy siblings and i are still lancing the night with our daily lesson.

my father, outside, smiles back to the circled orange moon.

my brother comes outside & my father receives no call.

ᴵᴵᴵno dark letter defining the death of your daffodil.

i gallop to your mother's house, ᴵⱽperhaps the scene of the call looped.

yes, ⱽthe physician had jettisoned you there before this wormhole.

ⱽᴵsomeone tries calling my father, i cut their phalanges.

you smooch saccharine out of your skeletal cheeks.

& ᵛᶦᶦyour mother hasn't regaled you with your last meal.

the moon is asked to clench her teeth & she attempts placing 

you between the incisors. 

ⱽᴵᴵᴵi unclad the sun & dissolve the moon with water.

you illuminate, fluorescent, sunflower & pour vitamin into your bones.

the scene honey until inflammation, ᴵˣuntil i am out like pus.

every time i read this poem from the beginning, you resurrect, ˣhoping.

cup of water 

for Shukroh 

when the sun crawled back to its canopy, fully bloomed yellow, 

i asked the land homing you in her womb: where is the hump 

shielding my sister? or you're a mouse sucking lactose 

from your child's breast? or she's a spore; 

an airborne being reeling round the cosmos?—

there's a way the dead ones keep themselves alive. 

like an umbilical cord, you worm yourself round my brain; 

in the lyrics of a song, you become the chorus. 

albeit your grave site is now flattened like sternum,

like expressway, like tongue, i still fix my eyes there, 

like a hunter to his prey, praying you parachute into my palms.

today, i'm not deeming about what dimmed a dazzling dawn 

like you. i just want you to slip into this poem. sip 

from this cup of water before bursting away like laughter back.

i am not an arabian but i bracket all my actions with inshallah 

Hope is the miracle. The calm, not before the storm, but within it.

— Samuel A. Adeyemi 

i’ve realized that there'll always be tomorrow but 

i’ll not always be in every tomorrow. how my father,

on his deathbed, responded with inshallah

to his friend’s greeting: ọ̀rẹ́ ód’ọ̀la nù. as if  

he had known only a miracle would keep him alive.

only god. the tomorrow grew its incisor & cut him.

believe me, i’m not rendering hope as a flighty feather.

listen to the gravity it bore in its footless legs; that night,

i dreamt of the moon choking in the throat of a river.

in reality, my father was ashing. i said, inshallah,

the wind will not blow. he said, inshallah,

it will wait till tomorrow. we both knew our grief

was the pacific ocean's age. we both knew—as our night—

our day will wear black clothes. but we yearn—like babies 

for nipples—for the miracle, for hope, for “god's will”

within the fog. isn't that how every neck beside the knife-edge

thirsts for safety? the miracle angeled; my father journeyed 

with the next day's sun & that's all that mattered.

see, patience they say, counts in the inception of a thunder,

& this poem renders me a pillow in the grayest shade of my

misfortune. just as hope, the bead we fashion our bony waist with.

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Abdulbasit Oluwanishola, SWAN V,  has works up/forthcoming in A Long House, ANMLY, BAM Quarterly, Poetry Journal, Poetry Column, Ake Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Ninshãr Arts, Rowayat, Haven Spec, Sley Magazine, Invisible City and elsewhere. He tweets @abdulbasitoluwa. You can also find him on Bluesky @oluwanishola.bsky.social.

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