Photo: Victor Adewale.
Logan February is a non-binary poet, as well as an essayist, music critic, singer, songwriter, and activist for LGBT rights, born in Anambra, Nigeria, in 1999. They and their work have been highlighted in The Guardian Life, Dazed, The Rumpus, Lambda Literary, Washington Square Review, and Africa In Dialogue, among others. They are the author of In The Nude (PANK Books, 2021) and three volumes of poetry. In 2020, they received the The Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature. In Spain, Kriller71 Ediciones published in 2021 Fuckboys, with translation by Ezequiel Zaidenwerg.
***
Backing Off
If love were a sea,
a nursing goddess,
a skylight.
If again the emptiness
of the photo filled with
birds. If time
stretched
before all of us, a horizon
and no one asked:
and now what?
If my heart twisted,
ready to explode
like fireworks.
Of course I worry. The earth
falls further into menopause.
We celebrate it with a toast. A party
on the beach. New Year
on Lagos Island. Crossing
the cosmic finish line,
a semiotics of the turbulence
of our minds. Or perhaps not
turbulence but this: what is coming. I know already
what I deserve. Sparkler stars
in the mirror. Future noises. A sudden heat.
If the tide hadn’t dragged me,
I would dive in running.
***
Husband Is the Most Beautiful Word
In that scorching heat
we feasted. The golden oil
of spices, the mischiefing whisper, melting away, from the pan
reminded us of old burns.
The taste of warm meat. Umami.
How delicious it was. From your fingers, the salt
was a blessing. I had to
take off my shirt. To take the knife from your hand. I wish we had
had Burgundy. We were trapped
in a kind of silence. When the song ended,
it started playing again.
***
Stone
Sometimes you’re eating an apple,
or sipping gin at a lousy party,
and you remember your throat and its smoothness.
Sometimes the only thing you have on is
the weight of your emotions, and your only shelter
is something that moves in the abyss of your belly,
that makes you think: Ah, in the end, I
was not of stone. Anyone can imagine
the height of such a handsome boy, but who
gets close enough to notice the new shimmer in the eyes?
Who wonders whether it isn’t the sweet juice
of some soft fruit on your lips, and leans in
to try it? That is rare. That is tenderness, like
the marble teeth that rasp the red skin of the apple. That
is love: when he pulls his mouth from the salt of your pain
and also ends up crying.
***
Hope in a Beehive Drawer
in the style of Sylvia Plath
I cross broken fingers to make a wish:
that the branches of the trees protect me from dragons
and from harm. Beetles swarm across the sofa.
My therapist says that the word is “trauma.”
A fallen bird becomes smoke.
I stir the sugar in my tea, standing in the middle
of the gust of dried leaves. I hope that
dad is waiting for me where the forest ends
but I already know that he no longer exists.
The pills they prescribed rain down on me.
***
No love for anything that doesn’t fit in my hands in the style of Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
I don’t love anything
that doesn’t fit in my hands.
But then again, I have large hands.
So I prefer small things,
to be able to assemble a bunch of things:
my misshapen lucky stone,
the rusted chain on the door,
the clip to scratch what itches inside me,
my boyfriend’s snail-shaped heart,
white as a pearl, clean of blood.
Everyone bears the one lost in their own story:
what harm is there in keeping a little corner inside me?
Inside, the whole world doesn’t try to hide something,
to smuggle in some warm beast?
I miss my home in my own room,
I won’t show my face again until my eyes come alive.
Good night, window.
Good night, wall.
Good night, little brother.
Good night, night. Sorry for being so sad. The whole world
bears the loser in their own story.