To end this brother,you climbed the moon to a far countryand never came back.By that I mean, when the policebroke their way into a room,billowing with suspicion, your bodywas a continent of maggots.By that I mean, when the telephonebrewed with some voice, Mama’shand went down, fallen skyscraper,and never came up again, be ni o.By that I mean, your deathbirthed another death.By that I mean, the neighborspleaded with me to unpackmy two bags of grief.By that I mean, they watchedme dissolve inside their teary eyes.
Oedipus
D.M. Aderibigbe
You males are heartless.Even to your mothers.—Grandma
Feature Date
- June 4, 2019
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© 2018 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
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Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission of the University of Wisconsin Press.
is a PhD student at Florida State University. He is the author of a chapbook, In Praise of Our Absent Father, selected for the New Generation African Poets Series of the African Poetry Book Fund. Born and raised in Nigeria, he earned his MFA in poetry from Boston University. His poems have appeared in the African American Review, The Nation, Ninth Letter, Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and elsewhere.
Madison, Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin—Madison
“In the urgent, abrupt, incantational poems of D. M. Aderibigbe, an essential gesture is simile: the explicit, striving word 'like' recurs often. And in every poem Aderibigbe thinks in metaphor. In a world of difference, amid unique strokes of memory and abandonment, violence and love, that action of likeness attains spiritual force.”
“A debut that electrifies and ignites beacons of much-needed understanding through even the darkest of days. These memorable poems twist and tumble across entire countries, while making maps of love and heartbreak. A brilliant beginning. Remember this name: Aderibigbe.”
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil
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