Before Twenty Fifty

By

___________________________I fetus tomorrow instead,
______________________________________fallowing.

___________________________I be in a brown study room,
___________________________saw-dusting a lumber siesta
___________________________for my temple’s stretch mark
___________________________couldn’t sit quietly,
___________________________listening to the gossips
___________________________of the grey-haired moonlight.
___________________________Unsavvy
___________________________of unborrowed tomorrows,
___________________________but if you ask me
___________________________it comes as no surprise
___________________________fading into the sky after
___________________________I tweet my pluckable crows,
___________________________to a dust bowl— all my life.
___________________________I unwind
___________________________a migratory bird,
___________________________an orphaned accordion,
___________________________of which I hope could make up
___________________________for my lack of manpower.
___________________________Before twenty fifty,
___________________________if I don’t suffocate in the dead of night
___________________________from gunpowder’s grip,
___________________________I’ll simply turn my wounded lung
___________________________into a vulture museum piece.

 

Ayomide Bayowa

Ayomide Bayowa is a Nigerian-Canadian poet, absurd playwright, and sociologist. He currently teaches First Year Writing at North Carolina State University. He holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Criminology, Dramaturgy and Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. He was the 2021-24 Poet Laureate of Mississauga. Since his work was longlisted for the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize in 2018 while he was a Theatre Arts fellow at the University of Ibadan, his work has been longlisted for the 2021 Adroit Journal Poetry Prize and he was a semi-finalist for the 2021 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Additionally, he was a finalist for the 2023 National Poetry Competition, Frontier Poetry Global Poetry Prize, and the North Carolina State University's English Department James Hurst Prize for Fiction. His first stage play received the maiden Arojah Students Playwriting Prize. In 2024, his debut poetry collection Gills was incorporated into the English Department's curriculum at Queen's University, Ontario.  

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