LOVE IS NOT LOVE, David Ishaya Osu

David Ishaya Osu was born in 1991 in Onda, Nigeria. His poetry has appeared in Transition, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, New Coin Poetry, Poetry Wales among numerous others. He is a board member of Babishai Niwe Poetry Foundation, and he has received a Pushcart Prize nomination. David is currently the poetry editor of Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel.


After mammiwata

          sun day’s overture: the potion
          of a pink cloud
          at eighteen
          glittering inside her future
—you can memorize your
lemon grass
scent, because
your window is always
open. see, centre is
enormous as you & this
silence is a foreshore
coming
nearer to
the lifetime of
a message sent by telescope—inside
the storm is about
a book refusing to open
at page nine
where midnight starts
a party. love keeps
her maiden name
& the journey
to narcotics. a broadsheet
the size of your garden, have you seen
Woman in Blue Reading a Letter


Love is not love

love is not love: some of you will have
your darkness drinkable: have the back
yards got any cologne different from
a girl reciting the sizes of shadows before
tasting a song to match: here is a story
of closets: two birds found a city by
a plum tree: the journey has no smoke


Friday is for you and me 

through a glass
orange: as it
feels with silk

dress, time every
side of my body
is a new fruit

today, you &
me take the
sky to bed

& say nothing
but you & me
today na today


Family 

          every light is a ghost
—the woman made all of us

          look front / milk reaches
everyone amazed—sing

          to your distance, bird
          yellow came out

          of the family &
          you & me touched


All the time 

one sound, i can touch
          the world around
                    you—apple top

                      come to me
              all the time, hold
my silence in

                      your mouth, hymn
          that space: it is just
you and me

                    waking
                    dead
                    lilies

—take the shower / transparent

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