The Final Plague

Lift up your heads, O ye gates
— Psalm 24:7

Have you tasted of your god’s anger?
Seraphs leaning into the morning with
swords, we name our house by the blood
of lambs, god’s children hiding the light
of someone’s son under their bed. Am i
still kind, or a long lost mirage of rust?
Pharoah’s disobedience blooming in God’s wrath.
I come from a lineage of rebels. Men
whose wives were queens in their dreams,
whose firstborns are god’s dinner. I bless
my father’s courage, the frog in his throat,
I bless his croak voice, the music of anguish
musing the morning on mourning, the silence
that folds his mouth as someone’s boy dies.
The lamb does not remember the house of its shepherd.
Moses, is this the price of freedom or God’s anger
when he thinks of the coming death of his Son?
My childhood of twilight is caught in this moment.
As a first son, the olive withers and kisses me goodbye.

Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau is a human nutritionist, documentary photographer, and author of The Arrival of Rain. Adedayo was shortlisted for the Babishai Niwe Poetry Prize in 2018, Runner up of the Sehvage Poetry Prize, 2019. He was the runner-up of the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize 2017. Adedayo is the Assistant Editor for Poetry at Animal Heart Press, the Contributing Editor for Poetry at Barren Magazine. His works have appeared or are forthcoming on Gaze, Glass, Jalada Africa, 8 Poems, Hellebore, Headway Lit, Nitrogen House and elsewhere. Adedayo is the Editor of Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry. His chapbook, Origin of Names, was selected by Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes for New Generation African Poet (African Poetry Book Fund), 2020.