Stripes Literary Magazine @ 5 poetry
Oct 12, 2025 2:56 pm
Like Jesus, You Wept
Adesope Ogunlade
they came in torrents tumbling down
just like Erin Ijesa waterfall,
your eyes, cello taped with glowing weariness, saw nothing but this seven rocks of dolour, embedded in illusion.
you wore a face, green and slippery
like bryophytes glued to soaked bricks
of drunk fences,
exposed to rain, storm, wind—
a life crumpled,
crinkling in the fold of a palm
like dried leaves.
the wrinkled jaw,
the meeting point &
capsising there was Simon's boat on the river that harbors no fish.
& a sniff was like it all dried up,
a wound surfaced by false scab,
your face wiped by the hands of drought
& a banquet of stifled squirms.
like Jesus, you wept, & weep again.
About the Author
Adesope Ogunlade is a young Nigerian writer/poet. His works appear in FIFWA bimonthly anthology—Issue 1, PIJAlance Inaugural Issue and OneBlackBoyLikeThatReview. He writes from Ibadan, Nigerian.