When the flying fiery horses come for me
I want to wear the apocalypse like beautiful sheaths
of unicorn wings on my skin—I want the camisole, the jar,
the torch, the dead wall clock to mean something cherubic
& healing. Healing is when a man with a bullet wound
walks into a field of daisies & becomes a forest.
The night holds so many possibilities for us, we just
might be anything: shadows casting reflection down
an aisle, a bird when it lifts prey from the frontage with
wings spread the length of a soaked bedsheet—
At the roadside, grave promises come back to life.
The primary school student at Ekpunobi junction who walked
out into the mouth of the streets returns with a tale
written over his body. His parents cannot feel his height
in the night breeze so they latch onto him the way
a miniature player holds onto his piano that the clefs & staves
might not escape his bones. In a dream that is not my own
a florist follows his dreams until he becomes one
with it. He is no more today, but I cannot say the bougainvilleas
& azaleas sitting just outside his porch don’t have his likeness.
We pursue our dreams so much we embody it even in
taste & pure light. I am not scared to dream, but how does
one not knot the ghostly possibility of footsteps disappearing
into stampedes? One day, you are standing by the bus stop
fiddling with your pen & note, & next the girl you love is
a poetry of existence itself—by which she happens
as the sea—by which she’s the daughter of the goddess Oya
& her veins flow down her neck like tributaries of a river.
A river forbidden to touch & made to wear a consciousness.
By way of wanderlust, you follow:
you who have known fear all your life, like the docent rat,
remains unflinched—even by a sudden burst of light spilled
on the tamarind road.
(Editors’ Note: “Dreams on a Tamarind Road” is read by Matt Peters on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 60A.)
© 2024 Prosper C. Ìféányí
Prosper C. Ìféányí writes from Lagos, Nigeria. A finalist for the 2024 Greg Grummer Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2023 Gerald Kraak Anthology Prize; his works are featured or forthcoming in The Offing, Strange Horizons, Salt Hill Journal, Obsidian, ANMLY, Black Warrior Review, Lolwe, Uncanny Magazine, Denver Quarterly, New Delta Review, the Oxonian Review, 20.35 Africa, and elsewhere.