African Poets Bot exists to amplify, promote & celebrate African poetry, from both new & established voices, by sharing tweet-size excerpts of published poems written by Africans across an endless variety of themes. Kindly follow us. ❣️

"morning light the fly I swatted taken away by ants" —Adjei Agyei-Baah

“The boys play hide and seek And the girls play hide and seek. The boys know where the girls hide And the girls know where the boys hide So in their hide and seek, Boys seek girls, And each to each sing Songs of love.” —Matei Markwei [Life In Our Village]

“someplace, students at a madrasah, spread prayer rugs on a field. facing the qibla, their eyes fall on roofs, brought down by stormwater, gunfire & God’s silence.” —Abu Bakr Sadiq [Rhubarb Shot]

“and she said: an undone shoelace cannot hold together a burning country and he said: that’s for love and salt water to fix she said: i’m looking for my father in every man—is he here?” —Bhion Achimba [my parents’ first meeting in a refugee camp]

“No poem for unmarked graves, for the fifteen-year-old boys in combat uniforms buried without combat uniforms so that more boys may wear combat uniforms.” —Maryhilda Obasiota Ibe [Anti Poetica]

“I rewrite history  
                       and keep the apple where no hand  can reach it. Sinai because 
            your breath is fear. Pisgah  
                       because your touch is hurt.” —Ameen Animashaun [The Dance of the Lambs and the Birds]

“Officer, I heard that after so much blood, the ground develops a taste for it.” —Hafizah Geter [Testimony (for Michael Brown, 1996-2014]

"he, barefooted on a football field, donning the jersey of an Italian team; the half-smile on his face, like a butterfly with one wing, almost beautiful." —'Gbenga Adeoba [Nightshift at the Coast]

"When shall I see again, my country, the pure horizon of your face? When shall I sit down once more at the dark table of your breast?" —Léopold Sédar Senghor [Long, long you have held between your hands]

"And while you trample on the bitter red soil of Africa Let these words of anguish keep time with your restless step— Oh I am lonely so lonely here." —David Diop [The Renegade]

“BIRD: You cannot know And should not bother; Tide and market come and go And so has your mother.” — John Pepper Clark [Streamside Exchange]

“CHILD: River bird, river bird, Sitting all day long On hook over grass, River bird, river bird, Sing to me a song Of all that pass And say, Will mother come back today?” — John Pepper Clark [Streamside Exchange]

“It is that my hands are also my father’s hands, and where the lines meet on the palm both of us have met and sat, each with his own silence not speaking. It is not that we are fighting It is the shape of love we have come to.” — Gbenga Adesina [Elegy of Hands]

“Here I am neurasthenic like a dog gone mad licking salty scabs of old wounds. With what words and with what face am I going to tell my orphaned children to forget their father?” — José Craveirinha [Cell 1]

“Even nightingales by West Lake cannot silence the wail of exile” — Dennis Brutus [Even Nightingales]

“this is how time is moving over the memory of you with the possibility to forgive death’s transgression. or at the very least scraping it to a bearable frame. love, see the years are peeling you back to me so fondly.” — Jakky Bankong-Obi [Peeled Back]

“In the solitary township lights and shadows play silently between the huts children sleep old people dream dogs sit panting flies buzz round the dunghill and from the roofs, threads of water drip — life affected by the absence of men—” — Antonio Jacinto [The People Went to War]

“The sun spun like a tossed coin. It whirled on the azure sky, it clattered into the horizon, it clicked in the slot, and neon-lights popped and blinked ‘Time expired’, as on a parking meter.” — Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali [Sunset]

“I imagine Kumase must have kissed silence the way new butterfly bones break after the British hellfire. The city, like the unfinished flesh of something hatched from the moon’s skull.” — Sarpong Osei Asamoah [Doomsday Device]