Oluwaseun Olayiwola

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Invisible Speaker – Are you surprised 

for George Floyd & Breonna Taylor & Ahmaud Arbery &

It begins again as you forget remembering how to breathe; because 
Following your body’s intruder like grief, through a country-
Sized bullet wound, into your own body, past the flesh you wear 
As if you were American, as if you were ghost already, were 
Bending like carcasses wrapped in a stiffened flag –: you must not
Forget to die before your brothers and sisters alike. Fact: 
Until you’re in the earth, you can’t rule it, so we make 
The ground a family photograph of loss. We wilt to bloom white 
Crocuses, white chrysanthemums, we sink beneath the soil’s abyss 
Littered with yesterday’s young bones, like a genetic battlefield. 
Everyone will join you. And by everyone, I mean no one
Who deserves it. I never wanted to be a martyr. I never
Wanted to start a movement. I wanted to be alive, wanted.

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OLUWASUEN OLAYIWOLA is a choreographer, poet, and dance writer based in London. In 2020, he completed his MFA Choreography degree from Trinity Laban Conservatoire, where he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study.