mineral lit mag
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  • Featured Poets Series
    • 3 poems by Chris Prewitt
    • 3 poems by Taylor Byas
    • 3 Poems by David Hanlon
    • 3 poems by Bailey Grey
    • 2 Poems by Seán Griffin
    • 1 Poem by Jarrett Moseley
    • 3 Poems by Hannah Cajandig-Taylor
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    • Issue 1
    • Issue 1.5: Hozier-inspired
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 3: Recovery
    • Issue 3.5: Lana Del Rey
    • Special Summer Solstice Prose Issue
    • Issue 4.1
    • Issue 4.2
    • Still Standing
  • Home
  • About/Submissions
  • Masthead
  • Featured Poets Series
    • 3 poems by Chris Prewitt
    • 3 poems by Taylor Byas
    • 3 Poems by David Hanlon
    • 3 poems by Bailey Grey
    • 2 Poems by Seán Griffin
    • 1 Poem by Jarrett Moseley
    • 3 Poems by Hannah Cajandig-Taylor
  • Issues
    • Issue 1
    • Issue 1.5: Hozier-inspired
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 3: Recovery
    • Issue 3.5: Lana Del Rey
    • Special Summer Solstice Prose Issue
    • Issue 4.1
    • Issue 4.2
    • Still Standing
Before the laughter
            by MAYOWA OYEWALE
 

Before the laughter was a cry, the crying song as

lovely as what it would give birth to.

No one played it well like I did,

no mouth was that beautiful with a scream.

My legs still shake whenever they remember the dance.

It used to be on a Sunday, Harvest Day, & we’d be on my porch, counting what we’ve
lost:

fathers, friends, innocence, age. We lost count.

I used to be the first to wail, &

it was always a perfect wail, shaking teardrops from the tree of every body.

Before the laughter was pain, my body the size of it.

With my tongue I used to mop the endless flow of blood in my mouth,

used to pour the well in my eyes into a garden of joy

that could no longer talk in flowers.

Before the laughter I waited with running legs, my friends a garland around my neck  

& on that porch we would hold ourselves in silence,

& wait & wait for one of us to burst out into

laughter.


Mayowa Oyewale is Yoruban. He writes from Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where he is an undergraduate student of English Literature at Obafemi Awolowo University. Mayowa has one of his poems in Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry (Animal Heart Press, 2020), and another forthcoming at Eunoia Review​. A lover of photography, you have to follow him on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/mayowa__oyewale?s=09
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