WISH-LIST

My uncle, who never ceases telling
Me the complexions of the 9-year

History he

Witnesses before me, starts again.
He wants to know if I see

The tournament

In Mauritius, when I was still a nipper
A nipper, who couldn’t decipher

Between go

And come. Though the Black and
White goggle-box, made the

Colourful streets, gaudy, like
What one sees, when

He’s got a

Black-eye. The leather-strapped
Passe TV, made the

Persian-style

Houses tremble, like a convulsed
Child. The rickety TV,

Granddad bought

With coins and still collected coins,
Turned Port-Louis, Curepipe,

Goodlands, and

Other major cities upside-down,
Like an upended crate

Of beer.

It’s been 19 years since the
History became history,

We now

Have a modest flat-screen TV,
And a cable, that

Snoops into

Other countries’ affairs, and
Tender it before

Us, in our

Very own eyes, in our living room.
The football tournament is

Now a teenager on the leaves of
History, but Mauritius

Remains transfixed. Yes! Its beautiful
Beaches, with water, clean

Like the

Abstemious ways of the prophets,
The Pigeon, pink, like

The palms

Of a newly born baby, and the
Thumping tortoise,

Still counting on

Its 150 something years inside
The pond of history, the

Chamarel Park,

The point, where the Earth shows
Seven different faces,

all

Are still

Transfixed. Except some other
Places of interest, which

Nature forgot

To endow on the island. Man of
Course has taken

Charge of the

Planting, and development of
Of nature’s flaws.

Man and

Nature have forced the Island
Of Mauritius on

The list of wishes I’ve written down
With the ink of

Priority.

ISLAND

At the centre of the sandy spot
Encircled by Swards,

Like the water rounds an Island.
You kneel the kneel of a needy, and

Pray the prayers of a prayer warrior.
Some little boys, who

Strive to re-write their family names
With their legs and other

Materials, other than God’s, play
In a field they purchase with

Many doses of temerity,
Sagacity and more importantly,

Acuity. The
Boys score and celebrate.

They celebrate, and you expostulate.
And I look, I look at the

Distance between
you and the boys. You’re

An island of your
Own. I must timely say.

ISALE-EKO

Just a kid with an
Unquenchable libido for
Soccer, and

A mother, supportive, like
The spines aid the primates.
The journey to

Isale-Eko for a premature
Soccer tourney takes a new twist,
Like a laudable fictional

Story. I dump my zest for
A movie, a movie I see through
Nature’s scenic eyes.

Commercial canoes, conveying
A large number of antsy eyes, some
Cramped with living, dead

And living dead fishes.
Ships, about 2 of them, anchored
To the bank of Whitemen’s

Impatience. Some kids, whose
Parents are peonies, come out of
Their wooden houses

With hooks, to fish out
Survival. My eyes is filled with
Too many stories,

I go back to join the
Rest of the team on the mainland,
I receive a warm handshake

From the desiccated breeze,
And no one needs to say it to me,
That I’m beyond the

Island with its seductive calmness

BIO

D.M Aderibigbe is a 23-year old Nigerian. An undergraduate of History
and Strategic Studies of the University of Lagos. His poetry and short
fiction have been published or forthcoming in 10 countries, in
journals such as Wordriot, The Applicant, Red River Review, Ditch,
Kritya, Thickjam, In Other Words: Merida, Cadaverine, Full of Crow,
DoveTales, The New Black Magazine, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Torrid
Literature, Rusty Nail, Vox Poetica, Pyrokinection, Commonline, Rem
Magazine and The Faircloth Review among others. He’s a die-hard Inter
Milan fc fan. His poetry is greatly influenced by Poets such as
Octavio Paz, Seamus Heaney, Kamau Brathwaite, J.P CLark, Ilya
Kaminsky, Natasha Trethewey, Naomi Shihab Nye, Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn
Brooks, His Prose owes much to Toni Morrison, Nuruddin Farah, J.K
Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, Helen Oyeyemi, ZZ Packer, Nick Hornby, and
Helon Habila, and his plays would always be grateful to those of Wole
Soyinka and Arthur Miller. His poems have also appeared in a couple of
anthologies including the Kind-of-a-hurricane Press Christmas
Anthology; Mistletoe Madness, edited by poets A.J Huffman and April
Salzano. He has also seen 2 of his poems included in the 2012 Best of
Anthology, Storm Cycle, and his pieces have also been named The
Beachies Award’s Most Memorable pieces of 2012. He lives and schools
in Lagos.