Goodnight Suburbia

Buildings blacken like the sky,

        And hovels their roots beneath

        The earth, run like fingers to Ghana,

        Street skirted by masts, narrowed

        Down to fires twinkling like stars,

        Broadcasting from windows to

        Old Oyo, the cinder of red houses

        At Bodija, stars of the Cul de sac,

        Martins and martins on electric wires

        That without supply hyphenate the

        Horizon, crickets occupy the hinges

        To the door, a way of darkness

        Animating a voice, the gloaming

        Paints a girl before me, micros crawl

        Up the road like cicadas, the wind

        Always blow empty, its reeds slapping

        Against the back door, billowing in

        Through the webbed louvres,

        Its Rottweilers somewhere there is

        A bank, as I saw a void replacing

        The gauntly alcoholic that once stood there

        And remembered a beer bottle in hand

        When he’d jumped in front of a moving van,

        Where he spun, etc.

Rabiu

Bio: Rabiu writes from Lagos. Visar has either appeared or soon appearing on isacoustic press, Riggwelter, Picaroon Poetry, Nightingale & Sparrow, kalahari review, African Writer, the Gerald Kraak Anthology etc.

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