Ojo Taiye
Ojo Taiye is a Nigerian eco-critical artist, storyteller, and creative researcher whose interdisciplinary practice bridges literature, sound, performance, and visual culture. His work is rooted in poetic inquiry, community engagement, and storytelling as tools for research, cultural awareness, and empathy.
Angels in Blood-Stained Robes
You live in a place where it hurts to be a woman.
What will the world gain if a once-common ancient trauma dies out?
Where have all the midnight crows gone?
I saw a bouquet of misshapen orchids spilling from a pot,
their yellow heads drooping, too heavy for their stalks.
When feelings grow cold: the body as a moving image,
an animal chiaroscuro.
Fela sings, and you are an onion bulb at the end of the world.
Like my poems, you are a body I have tried to repair—
a broken porcelain patiently awaiting kintsugi.
Spring daffodil leaves falling in the furrows.
All I remember is the lining of your palms,
a border growing with one rupture.
Trust—an unseeable smile shared among families
when they gather for a meal.
You are alive for now.
You still feel their thumbprint when you shower.
It is a perfect night to sit by your favorite plant
and feed on my last relationship.
I was a worn-out shadow fort.
The hours grow late,
a green glass bottle inside your stomach asking for rage.
More rage.
Truth is you are a circle of existence
calling forth the earth to witness.
An imaginary hand brushes your hair backward
through the keyhole.
How love halts us into numbing narratives,
a land of wet intrusion,
and you break bread and eat your name in pills again.
Your throat filled with silt,
perennial seeds heavy as songs
whittled to a hollow beneath a lonely almond tree.
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