Two Poems by Muiz Opeyemi Ajayi

Of Mutineers

my maternal ancestry traces to snakes
which means i am tabooed from biting
into the boa's limbs i know the taste
of rebellion once as a 9-year-old i crowded
my mouth with pink pork & banana mọ́sà
at an ówàmbẹ̀ party on returning from father's
father's farm he stuffs fleshy smoked serpent meat
in S's hijab & afterwards i watch her throat drown
spicy seasoned meat and garri which my school
teacher bids me to call cassava flakes which i
once read a novel character term farina in water
solution & lord why do i bother to translate

Acrylics

steered by our uncertainties, our heartbeats
keep galloping into each other's. pink smoke
swivelling out of our nightmares. pretty as fire
which does not burn. which does not
singe. just enough light to guide the moths
into oblivion. funny how, darling, last
night you sing to me of the breathless
moments just before the clocking
of lips. & afterwards i ask what we are
& you say acrylic on the palette
of the artist. & because we'd rather just be
the paint, i lay all of my flesh next to your
caramel body sitting on the slab, hand
the brush to the orbit & watch it
make a mock graffiti of us.

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Poetry
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July 26,
2022
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2-minute
read

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Muiz Opeyemi Ajayi

Frontier XVIII, studies Law at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. He edits at The Nigeria Review and is featuring/forthcoming on Rough Cut Press, Nigerian News Direct, Kissing Dynamite and elsewhere. He was second runner-up in the 2021 PROFWIC Poetry Contest and a 2021 ARTmosterrific Writer-in-Residence.

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