Liz Femi

I left the sermon to meet you

I said the world was ending so you could have me for half off
You laughed. You fool.
I would have thrown in my old journals
and a half-eaten bag of chin chin.

I left the sermon to meet you,
left before the Holy Spirit caught the hem of my skirt.
I wanted you to find me a poem that reminded you of me

Òlolufè mi
golden calf
hips lost in low light
sweat me tender

You didn’t have a poem.

I muzzle omens with bedsheets
stow my body away to Enoma Street
to the bench against the cement walls
across from the marsh we told ourselves had alligators
and we had to kiss for safety,
some haphazard plan I’m still crazed with like the splotches in your beard.

I stroll this mist of our encounters.
I’ve survived days, and another two,
our voices, skin-soaked, recede
into the room.
I climb down your ladder into my own flesh
into living waters of songs
songs for the ones who laugh last at the end of the world.

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The Return

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Liz Femi is a Nigerian-American writer, actor, and an NAACP Theater Award Nominee for her solo play, Take Me to the Poorhouse. A recipient of Writeability’s Right to Write Award, her work has been featured in The Harvard African, and performed at the Rogue Machine Theatre’s Rant and Rave. She’s based in Los Angeles and Atlanta, and has a forthcoming publication in Streetlight Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, and West Trade Review.

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