Valentines: Two Poems by Ayokunle Falomo

LUGARD & I

DEAR HEART,

  I’m writing this inside my tent.
I hope it reaches you, & well, my love.

Forgive me that you haven’t heard from me.
You have to understand, the work of love

Is not the same thing as the love of work.
Perhaps one day you’ll love the way I love.

I’ve only thrown myself into my work
To save myself from death, my love. I love

Its staving-grace. But even then, I know
It cannot save me from myself. My love,

There’s nothing that compels like duty does.
I plunge my whole self into work, my love,

This river wide & deep, because it’s love
That motivates. It’s love, my love, it’s love.

LUGARD & I

DEAR,

…love always means non-sovereignty.

  —LAUREN BERLANT

I imagined you
in my arms,

slow dancing
with you, flame,

breakdancing
to “Magenta,”

days before
the letter

I sent, the one
I wrote in blue

ink. Time passes.
The dense fog

at sunrise lifts.
What do I owe?

What do I own?

Your lips. His.
His lips. Yours.

Was it mine…?
Was it my lips

you sought…?

I do not want to be
alone. How wrong

I was to think of love
as though it were a treaty.





Note: As a colonial administrator, Frederick Lugard played a significant role in Britain’s colonial history. He served as High Commissioner (from 1900-1906) and Governor of both Southern and Northern Nigeria Protectorates (from 1912-1914) and Governor-General (from 1912–1919). These poems take/borrow/steal/repurpose words, phrases, sentences, images, ideas, etc. from The Diaries of Lord Lugard, Volume Four as well as the personal journal I kept in 2018, during my residency at MacDowell (previously MacDowell Colony). To be clear, the “I” in the poems is not always me, the poet, or Lugard for that matter.

About Ayokunle Falomo

Ayokunle Falomo is Nigerian, American, and the author of Autobiomythography of (Alice James Books, 2024); AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022), finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters’ Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry; two self-published collections; and African, American (New Delta Review, 2019), selected by Selah Saterstrom as the winner of New Delta Review’s eighth annual chapbook contest. A recipient of fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where he obtained his MFA in creative writing, his work has been anthologized and widely published.