Saddiq Dzukogi

Saddiq Dzukogi is a Nigerian poet. His works have appeared or forthcoming in publications such as: The Kalahari Review, Saraba Magazine, African Writer, Ofi Press, Amomancies, Oddball Magazine, The Bombay Review, Deep Water Literary Journal among others. Saddiq is the poetry Editor at Expound Magazine and is currently working on his manuscript; Obscene Letters. He lives in Minna.

 

 

 

 

Endline and a beginning

 

I go to a gut
In a cavity wall
Flirting with teeth and blood
and death
Is a biscuit bone--- message received
When legs come to the last sprint
of time
I died before death
On a margin:
through the punctuations
through the telephone.
The night drank me
Spread me wide on its crustmat as memories
eggs hatch time
Like a scion breaking into timeclippers
I sit in a plot of hell
I see the flamewalls
Bluer than skyscreen
Like an owl chewing the night in my heart---
- eyes tangled on fleshlines
Foxes spring as skin shrink like nylon
In the breath of a candle-fire

 

 

 

 

 

 

Song Of Askia



Every morning
you find way to a riverside
and lap glance in the hearth of water
and fetch dreams in calabash
There is neither snow nor winter
just spring water
Why then do they call you Askia
When you live where harmattan
blows thatch off the peak of huts-
Why will they call you that
when you drink from a river
not a melted glacier
Why will they
when you live in a place
where the sun is honest
and do not shy behind clouds
to peek at your face from a blue veil
Why will a rock wish to be called a heap of sand
Why will Nile wish flow like Mississippi
Why will a cocoa seed
wish to grow into a peach tree
Why Askia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Call Song

 

people worship
god
more
when they're
           having sex.
listen to them
          call Song
during the act
         and how they
call him in temples
         during prayers.
you will know
                     how passionate
god blossoms
             when the pen
opens the secret
                           of the book.