perhappened
  • the mag
    • the issues
    • submit to the mag
  • the press
    • the chapbooks >
      • CALIFORNIA IS GOING TO HELL
      • body in motion
      • sun of daedalus / song of anticlea
    • submit to the press
  • support us
perhappened mag
issue 1: CARNIVAL

becoming darkness

TEMIDAYO JACOB
my birth-carnival is in a few days              &              the only thing i'll be celebrating
is failure --
for how well it has hung around my      b    o    d    y                     [like my first name].
something must make a man's body become still,
                                     & mine is definitely from the consolation in my lover's body --
the only wine i'll be drinking & echoing cheers to is that from in between her legs.
                                            what does it mean to turn a new age
   if not to increase the amount of failed years to be celebrated by your aging body?
each time i look at the sky, i think of my body as

the dark clouds /
                                                                                                       the stars struggling to twinkle /
                                     birds struggling to sing into heaven.

lately,
i've begun to see the sky as my enemy because it reminds me of my flood-like flaws than it
promises me rainfall / a sunny day.                           i wish i know how to name myself after night
so that i can at least expect a visit from joy at dawn.
now,
the only      present         i'm expecting on my birthday is the
       presence       of a stranger who will show me my darkness so i can become it.

Temidayo Jacob is a Sociologist who writes from the North Central part of Nigeria. He is the author of Beauty Of Ashes. Temidayo's work has appeared and is forthcoming on Rattle, Outcast Magazine, Lucent Dreaming, The Temz Review, Kissing Dynamite, and others. You can reach him on Twitter @BoyUntouched.
perhappened mag
← back    issue 1: CARNIVAL    next →
header photo: larm rmah (unsplash)
​

© 2020-22 perhappened LLC
  • the mag
    • the issues
    • submit to the mag
  • the press
    • the chapbooks >
      • CALIFORNIA IS GOING TO HELL
      • body in motion
      • sun of daedalus / song of anticlea
    • submit to the press
  • support us