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In the poetry collection
Sacrament of Bodies, Romeo Oriogun examines queerness in Nigerian society, masculinity, and the place of memory in grief and survival.
List of contents
Before Your Mama Knew Us as Light
The Ritual of Giving a Body Its Name
Cathedral of a Broken Body
Departure
Kumbaya
Saddest Night Alive
Elegy for a Burnt Friend
Coming Out
How to Survive the Fire
At Udi
Denial
The Guilt of Exile
To the Man Who Mocked My Scared Body
Boy
Pink Club
Before You Leave
The Birthday
A Viral Picture
Satan Be Gone
What We Do Not Want
The Lost Chapter of the Bible Written After God Stopped Receiving the Smoke of Burnt Flesh
Elegua
The Queer Boy Remembers Colonization
Sacrament of Bodies
I Do Not Want My Body to Fly
My Body Is No Miracle
My Tinder Date Speak of Fruits
A Reversed Epithalamium or What Didn’t See the Light
Heaven Is a Back Alley without God
Goodbye
Exile
Battle of the Rams
Finding Home
What the World Won’t Show Us
On Forgetting
Everything Must Die
On the 23rd Death Anniversary of My Father
Prelude to Freedom
Sermon of Pain
Meeting My Mother through Death
After a Blackout
Acknowledgments
About the author
Romeo Oriogun was born in Lagos, Nigeria. He is the author of the chapbooks
Burnt Men,
The Origin of Butterflies, and
Museum of Silence. He was the winner of the 2017 Brunel International African Prize and has received fellowships from Harvard University’s English Department, the IIE-Artist Protection Fund, Oregon Institute for Creative Research, and the Hutchins Institute of African and African American Research. He lives in Iowa, where he is an MFA candidate for poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Summary
In the poetry collection Sacrament of Bodies, Romeo Oriogun examines queerness in Nigerian society, masculinity, and the place of memory in grief and survival.
