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god’s throne has lost its legs—
humbled, god morphs into a creature and

panics, a creature that
panics.

the night my blind, hollow eyes became the holes in
my mama’s septal heart—lonely, quiet, full of

darkness—màmá marvelled at the
moon, oh, so bright!

{strange how our wounded lives can
flutter at the smell of distraction}

but, in my darkness, i stretched my hand to it in
accusation:          oh fraud,
                                 what is your light but a corruption of heaven?

the god, he’s sprawled on the ground.

i once heard an elder swear that the bright eyes of a
child can fill a mother’s heart?

but, god, these eyes do not see.

i and màmá, two moons, two eclipsed suns.
yet in the manner of desperate men, i
prayed that the polluted light fills my eyes.
make me see.

i hear màmá sob, i hear her crave the grace of
a light i do not have
her bosom so pressed to me i heard the
                               slow p u l s i n g of her holey septic heart—
                                            two more months, is it?

rárá, màmá, it’s okay.

a gasp and a gasp, & death consumes her breath,
deadweight slumping over a child’s darkness

in a metamorphosis, the end is the tail of
a seed. so, that night,
god became a creature—did you not see his throne

f

 a

  l

   l

    ?



Elisha Oluyemi was a joint-winner of the Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize for Short Story (2023), winner of the Ikenga Short Story Prize (2023), and shortlisted for the Isele Short Story Prize (2024). Elisha’s writing appears in Lolwe, Mystery Tribune, Broken Antler, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Sledgehammer, and elsewhere.
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In this episode of Critical Friends , the Strange Horizons criticism podcast, Dan Hartland is joined by Ryan Elliot and Rosanna Pendlebury, to ask questions about literary SFF. What is it? How do we know it when we see it? And what’s it good for?
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