After the Map Was Broken

by Ókólí Stephen Nonso

A mother ties a white cloth to the door, a quiet flag,
while rain drips from the zinc like a ticking clock.

Boys carry empty bowls past the checkpoints,
dust rising behind them like unspoken prayers.

An old man buries yams in the earth before dawn,
the soil remembering every footstep pressed into it.

A plane whines above the village, dropping metal hunger,
the sky learning how to bruise without thunder.

A child whispers Biafra in sleep, his lips cracked,
night folding around him like the corner of a torn map.

Women grind cassava with bones grown thin,
singing a song that sounds like the word stay.

A father sharpens silence beside the fireless hearth,
counting the small breaths of children he cannot feed.

The river keeps moving, even when bodies float,
its current pulling the memory of home toward the sea.

In the market, salt costs more than gold,
& a mother trades her wedding beads for a cup.

A soldier leans against a tree, closing his eyes,
hearing the names of towns he will never return to.

Someone gathers the bones, washes them clean,
lays them in the red earth, says, let there be peace.

Ókólí Stephen Nonso (he/him) is a Nigerian writer and first-year graduate student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His poetry has appeared in Feral Journal, Ebedi Review, Ngiga Review, Brittle Paper, The Shallow Tales Review, African Writer, Adelaide Literary Magazine (New York), Olney Magazine, Tuck Magazine, Ofi Press, among others. His short fiction is featured in The Best of African Literary Magazine and several national and international anthologies. He is the 2024 winner of the Muse Journal Award for Best Literary Artist of the Year and a joint winner of the May 2020 Poets in Nigeria (PIN) 10-Day Poetry Challenge. His other honors include first runner-up in the Fresh Voice Foundation Poetry Contest and third prize in the Akuko Magazine Inaugural Prize for Poetry (2021). In 2024, he was also shortlisted for the Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature. His poem “Transcript” will be exhibited at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2025. He is also the recipient of the 2025 Achievement Scholarship Award at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In recognition of his growing literary impact, he was profiled in Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2021 by Sweetycat Press. Say hello on X @OkoliStephen7.