The Prostitutes of Allen Avenue by Oyin Oludipe

Oyin Oludipe
Jul 24, 2017 · 2 min read

It’s a smoky street: but not from

Earthly flames of woe where

Posh hormones drape the heavens

In sediments, where night falls to

A sudden orchestra of elevations, where

Lilies of the valley turn flesh cuisine for

Discreet vegetarian passions.

.

It’s a smoky street. Three boiling tubers saunter

Down the arcade in solemn quest

For the hoe. It’s a strange harvest for

An unsound economy that spells a farmer

To spill his seeds. And, alas, in unsound light,

Each hour is reaping time. Foreign granaries

Are filled; a ride price will be waged

To learn the rise and fall of a new body language.

.

Each hour is confession time: not of the straying

From God or from the light, but of beauty

And what it sought to buy, but failed to

Strangle. “Weren’t cleavages sculpted

By divine hands? Let this one cost you

My humanity.” Salivation summoned, an unfair trade

Is sealed in sense’s lassitude. “Fine! That should compensate.”

.

But this present void is sublime, cast with

Neptune eyes — each bats itself to a battle cry,

Each stride eases the crooked doorways

Of earth, and each thigh is a palace

Into the shadows, ushering sail-wing birds

Of petals in tidal waves. Each presence is

An absence. Limbs do not ground the heart.

And absence, perhaps, is abstinence —

Of a different kind.

.

Yet this present void celebrates the rites

Of dusk, with fire and without a god;

.

It’s a smoky street.

Oyin Oludipe

Copywriter. Thinker. Editor. Essayist. Fish Farmer. Recipient, 2016 Christopher Okigbo Poetry Prize.

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