After Fady Joudah
I wouldn’t hurt a canary
that had nested in the garden’s shady nook.
I waited till Autumn
until it flew away of its own will.
My father said, “If you tear down the nest,
it will know this isn’t a place
it can call home.”
I said, “Is that how people become refugees?”
About the author: Oladosu Michael Emerald (he/him) is an art editor at Surging Tide magazine, a poet, a writer, a digital/musical/visual artist, a photographer, a footballer, a boxer, and a political scientist.
He is the author of the self-help book A Step Beyond Failure, published in 2020.
His works have been published or are forthcoming in many magazines and have won numerous awards in writing and art; a few to mention: Better Than Starbucks, Flash Frog, Icefloe Press, Undivided, Feral, Lyra, Afrocritik, Providus Bank Anthology alongside Professor Wole Soyinka, Oriire, Necro, Ev0ke, shortlisted in Paradise Gate poetry contest (top ten), shortlisted in the AprilCentaur essay competition, Kalahari Review, Con-scio, Madness Muse Press, Cultural Daily, Spill Word Web, Paper Lantern Lit, The Maul Magazine, Zoetic, Pinch Journal, penumbric, Motheaten Magazine, Native Skin, Nymph, Naija Reader's Buffet, Terror House Magazine, Spring Word Web, Third Estate Art magazine, thehearth magazine, kalonipa, and elsewhere.
He's a man who does not know how to give up, and art chose him before he existed.