Boyfailure

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

So, here the story goes: I was eight, right? 
Picture this: three boys, real cool, wet 
heat, grandma’s concrete yard, the bruised 
flesh of June. We did not call it summer 
because we had not yet learned to flatten 
our tongues to hold the weight of an empire. Mother 
lined us up and asked what we wanted to become 
when we grew up. Doctor, said Kazim. Banker, 
said Faizal. Lawyer, said I. But the truth 
was that I wanted to grow up to become 
a love song. I wanted to become Ayinde Barista 
serenading his lover in a jewelry shop in Medina. 
I wanted to become a lock of my mother’s hair 
in my father’s hands. I wanted to trade my flesh 
& bones for a fantasy so small there’s no language 
for it. Two decades later, I am no fantasy. 
I’m a Manhattan suit & overpriced Dr. Martens 
telling the bartender to keep ‘em coming. If this 
is a love song, then it is one in which the lover 
realizes that love was a bedtime story 
that went too far. Who wants to dream of blood 
tests & graveyards? I have walked the length of this 
borrowed country in search of the ultra-magic balm. 
In the meantime I’ve turned this wound into art 
& art into artifice. By this, I mean I’ve tricked 
myself into believing that these poems are worth 
living for, that there’s some value in stringing 
words together in efforts to translate 
the Wolf’s incessant howls through my tortured skull. 
The story goes that I moved continents in search of love 
& shelter & a long breath of uncontaminated air. Instead, 
in six months, it gave me an allergy to water. 
I haven’t felt clean ever since. 




Appears in Ará'lúèbó: The Immigrant Monologues (Acre Books, 2026)

KÁNYIN Olorunnisola is the author of the poetry collections, ARA’LUEBO: The Immigrant Monologues (Acre Books, 2026) and and the superblack exhibit (Jackleg Press, 2027). His debut short film, Chiaroscuro, premiered at the 2024 Rising Tide Film Festival. His writing appears in Al Jazeera, FIYAH, Georgia Review, and the Chicago Review of Books. He is the founder of Sprinng Inc., a literary nonprofit, and former Nonfiction Editor of the Black Warrior Review. His work has been supported by Harvard University’s Woodberry Poetry Room, the Levitetz Leadership Program, Speculative Literature Foundation, and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP). He has an MFA from the University of Alabama.

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"Boyfailure" by KÁNYIN Olorunnisola