Bola Opaleke is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. His poems have appeared or forthcoming in a few journals like Frontier Poetry, Rising Phoenix Review, Writers Resist, Rattle, Cleaver, One, The Nottingham Review, The Puritan, The Literary Review of Canada, Sierra Nevada Review, Dissident Voice, Poetry Quarterly, The Indianapolis Review, Canadian Literature, Empty Mirror, Poetry Pacific, Drunk Monkeys, Temz Review, The Pangolin Review, and others. He holds a degree in City Planning and lives in Winnipeg MB.



Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry: At the Border A Pattern Too Familiar

Poets Resist
Edited by Sneha Subramanian Kanta
December 27, 2019

Bola Opaleke

Dictionary of Impeachment

Did you see the grain of salt falling off the epitaph? Sometime in July, two vultures met where the sky exploded. Luckily, no one remembers the smoke hiding in everyone’s closet. Voices from across the hill spread like scented grass later. A few rebels forced themselves in -to the glasshouse. They have been warned to never throw stones. Yet, a mirror is made to break itself. Where the emperor openly washes lice off his hair & say no one must look, light scatters. As black rain falls, he stumbles upon a place where the earth is dented; digs up rotten bodies of knights, & feels like king. Did you see the names engraved in marbles? Did you see the names impressed in dust? & if every month is not a spider, how come December is a weaver of snow? They say someday, the king will be dressed in gold & sapphires. A girl wipes dirt off the wall with a finger, says: what king would not desire a better grave than this?


Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
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