Ṣèkèrè by Hussain Ahmed

A Nigerian poet builds a short, devastating poem around the ṣẹ̀kẹ̀rẹ̀ — the beaded gourd rattle — as an instrument of buried grief and inherited hatchets, love professed like an oath nobody quite believes. Ahmed writes toward memory and scar-tissue with a precision that never once reaches for a bigger word than it needs.

Read it on Guernica Mag.