Three-Legged Sprinting and Other Poems by Ismail Bala

                       Three-Legged Sprinting 

It isn’t so much that she adores him

and wants to move in with him

that keep me sleepless at night

as the image of them trudging upstairs hand-in-hand

in a sort of three-legged sprinting.

I only have to shut my eyes

and he is holding her by the waist,

urging her towards the bed.

He has left the door ajar,

but I can’t quite see what’s going on,

only peeps once in a while:

the tattoo on her leg, the sweat on her glistening back.

I want to turn away,

but the horror of her orgasm throttles in my throat,

the shock of her tongue flaunting with his tongue,

her mumbling sweet nonsense,

her letting out a monstrous moan. 

Fraulein of Coy

She must think me maverick

teasing my rod against 

her hands of ejection

she giggles perhaps 

behind my slack

before the next smack 

certain in her confidence 

of my tumescent agony

Fraulein of Coy

sly like a ploy

Mario Luizi: The Valley of Fires 

Flame everywhere, low flame of scrub and thicket,
flame climbing walls where shadows tremble
without the strength to settle, flame
moving across distant ridges, rising and falling
like a bright filament drawn through ash,
flame loosening from branches and drying vines.

Time has loosened here, neither early nor late
only this hour in which the valley, festive
and sorrowing, spends what life remains.
I turn and number my dead.
Their procession lengthens
leaf after leaf falling from the first broken tree.

Grant them rest, enduring rest
carry them beyond this wheeling storm
of cinder and smoke that coils through ravines,
wanders the footpaths,
turns upon itself, then vanishes.

Let death be only death
unburdened by struggle, emptied of pain.
Grant them rest. Quiet them.

Below, where the harvest thickens,
life continues its slow labour
barrels rolled toward water,
hands moving in the patient rituals of each hour.
A young dog sleeps in the garden’s corner.

Such a small fire barely reaches
the thickets of this life
perhaps not far enough to illumine it.
Only another fire can finish the work
consume what remains,
render it into light, lucid and unbroken.

Songs rise, from the dead to the living,
from flame to bone,
requiems carried in each tongue of fire.
Stir the embers. Night has come
its breathing web stretched between hills.
Sight falters, but through heat and darkness
something endures, known without seeing.

Grey Mercy

Who would have thought, the rain,

in all its grey mercy, could hide such 

fire? Tonight, it is endless—a sheet

of trembling glass laid over the world.

The gutters & leaves keep vigil, their 

small throats whispering the psalms of their 

breaking & the calm of those who have learned 

to yield. I’m standing beneath

the slow ruin of water, listening to

the sigh of roofs at this weeping too wide,

I do not have a word for it. Perhaps the

wind, too, has carried the secret ache

of what dissolves unseen. 

The moths & beetles cling to 

the porch light, something 

sacred & sorrowful in their trembling against

a brightness that could end them;

how love is the promise & the undoing

of everything—the soft ache of wings

moving towards their own extinction, 

the surrender to glow. Everything here leans

towards vanishing: the breath fading

from the window’s glass, the murmur

of a faraway train losing itself in fog,

the echo of children’s laughter thinning

into the pulse of puddles, the moon

forgetting its own reflection.

In the hush of this merciful rain,

a branch bows beneath its burden, a stray dog 

curls around its hunger,

a heart returns to its quiet cage carrying the warmth 

of a remembered sun. I think of my own 

life—a brief gleam inside this falling 

water, a frail shimmer bending 

towards its loss, & how it, too, must 

one day learn to become the rain.

 Imp 

(i.m. Jack Gilbert)

I can’t recall her name.

It’s not like I’ve slept

with so many women.

The truth is I can’t even place

her face. I sort of recall how firm

her legs felt, and her looks.

But what stays with me

is how she ripped apart

the grilled chicken using her fingers,

and smeared the oil on her chest.

Ismail Bala is a poet, translator, and critic whose work bridges classical poetics and modern sensibility, and whose mentorship has shaped a generation of emerging African poets. Born and educated to university level in Kano, he did his post-graduate studies at Oxford.  His poems have been translated into Latvian, Belarusian, Nepalese, Slovenian, French and Polish.  He is a Fellow of the International Writing Programme of the University of Iowa. He is the author of Line of Sight (Praxis, 2020),  A Span of Something (INKspired, 2024) and Ivory Night (KSR, 2024). These selections are excerpted from three forthcoming collections: Memory of Departure (Masobe, 2026), Night Keeper and Mad about her Shrimp (Praxis, 2026).