Poetry: Tell Her

July 12, 2023 – Los Angeles: Kunle Okesipe, from Nigeria, is a poet and prize-winning playwright whose work has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies.

Tell Her

Tell her that sheds a tributary of tears in the rain,
That mates her salt with silt,
In a jailbreak of feelings like funerary volcanoes:
There is a hyperlink of sorrow between her cheeks and a distant wood.

Tell her that flees the fiction of daylight,
Whose footfall is an echo of subsequent pains,
Her turn of heels a quarry to predators of vegetal fear,
Tell her even the dead tire too and winds lose their steam.

Tell her that stands appareled in nightfall,
Of flowers mute in the dark and aureate wings in the night sky,
Tell her that in the shadowy meridian of a dry watercourse
There are ancient dreams of fishes also braving the claws of time.

Tell her the detours and crossroads on the highway of the soul
Have their final loop,
And the serpentine ravage of the ocean belt has a dry end.
Tell her that waits like a day star, there is always a night next door.