after Kechi Nomu


This is where all the crucifixion starts;
on a path
where a body has looped itself in search of love.
Like everyone else who witnesses this,
you make a mental note:
unmarked graves,
unburied body parts.
You say you’re not scared of what God has done to you

till words muttered in the streets start to blow inside your head.
Word after word, time after time. Inside you, hills tumble,
spent, like lines failing in humdrum,
till what is left unmarked is an unlikely harmony:
your father’s slippers dangling on threads from the ceiling
in sensible acts of immolation.

Besides their worn soles, no lessons are left behind for his sons.  

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Ismail Bala is a poet, translator, and critic whose work bridges classical poetics and modern sensibility, and whose mentorship has shaped a generation of emerging African poets. Born and educated to university level in Kano, he did his post-graduate studies at Oxford.  His poems have been translated into Latvian, Belarusian, Nepalese, Slovenian and Polish.  He is a Fellow of the International Writing Programme of the University of Iowa. He is the author of Line of Sight (Praxis, 2020),  A Span of Something (INKspired, 2024) and Ivory Night (KSR, 2024). This poem is excerpted from a forthcoming collection, Night Keeper (Praxis, 2026).