Withering

Mu’izz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí

Here’s a theory: terrible memory is a primary prerequisite

for being a poet. Here’s another: memory turns most

poignant postwar, in the gathering of ruins, in the desperate attempt

to document what we couldn’t forestall, in the aftermath.

At the intra-faculty rookies’ debate finale, when i kept for-

getting subsequent lines to prior paragraphs, i drifted

to imagining the old road sign with peeled-off acrylics on

its rusting metal, beyond the hostel walls. How it pointed

in two parallel paths & i couldn’t tell which was to where. Now,

i mean my paragraph-linking cue. But that is the problem.

Vivid imagination clawing up your mind when all you need is

memory. How the dam—deep-green in the shadow of clustered

trees—stared back in silence as i recited the speech by rote to the dark

water, noon through dusk, in the aftermath of the finale loss. The birds

cooing overhead echoing their assent. Reminiscent of vultures

hovering over our dead in the days after the Ago Riot. But that

is the problem. Memory beclouding my psyche when all

i’ve been trying to imagine are new techniques to for-

getting the chronology of the tragedy we witnessed.

MU’IZZ ỌPẸ́YẸMÍ ÀJÀYÍ (Frontier XVIII) is the Editor-in-Chief of Nigeria Review, Asst. Curator of Poetry Column-NND, and a 2023 Poetry Translation Centre UNDERTOW fellow. He won the Lagos-London Poetry Competition 2022 and University of Ibadan Law LDS Poetry Prize 2022. He features in Frontier Poetry, Chestnut Review, Olongo, Lolwe, SAND, Poetry Wales, & elsewhere.