what do you do for a living?

—after Hadara Bar–Nadav

By Sodïq Oyèkànmí

full-time son. full-time standing in the morning sun—praying for rain like a peasant after a reign of drought. full-time devouring my dessert before the main course meal. full-time cursing. full-time cursing the government for caging us in a nut shell—literally. full-time raising my middle-finger at the sight of green-white-green. full-time silence. full-time leaving living—forgetting that i’m someone’s son until my [ ] screams my name out down the hall crying why the fuck are you hurting yourself—hurting me? full-time son. full-time asking God what’s missing in the algorithm of my life? full-time listening to the songbirds do their thing from the rooftop before breakfast. full-time breaking into a run at the sound of sirens. full-time explaining to the blue-yellow-green than i'm not a criminal—only a full-time citizen. full-time fastening my days with a thread. full-time leaving the flowers to rot in the vases. full-time writing verses that will never make it to the editor’s desk. full-time overdosing on xxxtentacion albums & bawling my soul out under the shower at 2am. full-time battling with grief clinical depression anxiety myself. full-time congratulating my friends on twitter for making it out of this country alive. full-time self-employed stitching my pain to the mouth of metaphors. full-time smoking purple hazes in rooms not mine—until i forgot why i stepped into them in the first place. full-time leaving the stadium before full-time to get burritos for my dying [ ]. full-time holding on. full-time cladding myself in ash black. full-time flying into the future with zero regrets—unapologetic. full-time narcoleptic insomniac. full-time close to abandoning this poem. full-time silence. full-time standing in front of the mirror screaming i love you i love you i love you! full-time fuck a perfect ending. how do i survive?

Sodïq Oyèkànmí is a poet, dramaturge and editor from Nigeria. A 2022/23 Poetry Translation Centre (UK) UNDERTOW Fellow. He is a 2024 Best of The Net winner, a recipient of the Unserious Collective Fellowship (2023), and won the Sevhage/ Hyginus Ekwuazi Poetry Prize (2023). His works are published/ forthcoming in A Long House, Blue Earth Review, Frontier Poetry, LOLWE, Lucent Dreaming, Modern Poetry in Translation, North Dakota Quarterly, Passages North, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales, Strange Horizons and The Four Faced Liar.

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