Issue 001 ‘Japa’ is a collection of “last straws and camel backs”. It is a collection of grief glossed over with the hope of something certain but unknown. It is a wish, a simple prayer for something imperfect but works. Ultimately it is a pause, a brief solemn exclamation before we return to wanderlust.
To japa is to be free, to seek greener pastures, to find your voice, to encounter the
sunrays of hope, to regain your future, to actualise dreams, to have the world as a
canvas, to become, to breathe again—or the opposite of all these.
You think of Tolani more. You think of FaceTiming him. You practice what you want to say. But you find that you keep forgetting. You finally find the courage to call him. You FaceTime him. Your hands are clammy and your stomach feels queasy. He picks. But unless his hair grew into dreads and he’s started wearing beads around his neck, that’s not him
The guilt incessantly troubles the poet’s psyche. In “Irritations in the Oyster” the guilt is explored with some poetic mastery: “I have danced to man-made tunes/slowly my feet withdraw.” The poem captures the inextricable link between a country’s failings and that of its individual citizens.
Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, once called human beings “a wanting animal.” Awele echoes this when she enthuses that human longings are “endless,” as they have unidentified needs. In the second act, the twins seek to configure their destinies in the reincarnations awaiting them, with Mgbada imploring, “Let us choose our own paths in life!”
