have you listened
to his last
song—we now
grow granite in
our mouths, a
full year the
habit of
a highway, have
you lived
in a piano before
or had sex
over a loudspeaker?—ask
this rain
if she has
a director.

the playthings
in a red blood
cell of a
blue band, the pleated
skirt of
a river in
her magic months
—a chessboard
music is insane
when he doesn’t
touch the queen

David Ishaya Osu (b. 1991) is a Nigerian poet. His poetry has been published in Ann Arbor Review, Porter Gulch Review, Akitsu Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, Acumen, The Missing Slate, and Atlas Poetica: A Journal of World Tanka, among others. David is a board member of the Babishai Niwe Poetry Foundation, and he is currently working on his debut poetry book.

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