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  • Urban Autumnal
  • Inua Ellams (bio)

Like most folks of a certain age, I too have coiledmy fingers into a semblance of letters, hoisted northa corner of my top lip, drooped south my jeansand snarled something farfetched, brash and rhythmicat my balled fist, pretending our tapering to do lists,stacks of paperwork, gaping mouths of dump-trucks,cash registers, boardrooms or lecture halls might partto vibrating basements of stage lights and bass,a humming electric-eclectic, their hoods lifted, caps low,preemptively nodding, gun fingers raised, waiting,waiting in the sweat-drenched dark, speakers hungry,and us to feed them words. We have imagined this,queued outside, bristling, overdressed, impatient,praying to hear again the constellation of consonantsfrom our favorite rappers, visceral hymns and hooksof baffling sincerity, proof the rapper too once slouchedagainst walls, squinted through smog at night’s sky,glimpsed far districts and wished them close, hymnswhere books of faith are weighed against beer bottles,but the rapper finds one rose in stone, a root breakingbrickwork, hope-filled hymns of verses searchinguniversal laws to love: when to fight, let go, or hold on,lines that walk the narrow paths we do between survivaland poverty, excess and comfort, ambition and greed,destination and destiny. Should the rapper stray, lostin translation, there are verses, proof, the rapper doesas we do, lays down humbled, sprawled beneathour tasks, listening to our thousands marching off beat,fleeting in alleys, deprived of sleep, poised over fences,frozen mid traffic, crumpled under cars, our breathsraw riffs rising, which the rapper lifts into sound booths,attempts to form organizing principles from the mangledlottery of urban lives. The rapper beats against structures,spills out of tunnels, pours down streets, meets us [End Page 339] in basements, lapping against the stage, waiting forthe rapper’s art from our fragments, waiting to hearthe flow of our lives. In appreciation we spit rhymefor rhyme, top lip north, jeans south, balled fist,farfetched, brash, fingers curled resembling letters—most folks of a certain age have done this. [End Page 340]

Inua Ellams

Inua Ellams, born in Nigeria in 1984, is an internationally touring poet, playwright, and performer. He has eight published books of poetry and plays. His first play, The 14th Tale, a one-man show which he performed, was awarded a Fringe First at the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival and his third play, Black T-Shirt Collection, ran at England’s National Theatre. He is currently working on Barber Shop Chronicles and two volumes of poetry: # Afterhours and Of All the Boys of Plateau Private School, his first collection.

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