Abu Bakr Sadiq is a Nigerian poet born and raised in Minna. He is an undergraduate student at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Sadiq is the winner of the 2022 IGNYTE award for Best Speculative Poetry and a finalist for the 2023 Evaristo Prize for African Poetry. His work has been published in Boston Review, The Fiddlehead, Mizna, Fiyah, Palette Poetry, Uncanny Magazine, Augur Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, and elsewhere. His new book Leaked Footages (Nebraska, 2024) was published this month.

The poems in Leaked Footages carry urgent subjects, ranging from death to disappearance to grief to memory. Not only do the poems fulfill the tradition of witnessing often manifested in contemporary poets such as Garous Abdolmalekian and Ilya Kaminsky, but they extend that tradition by the medium through which they witness: the technical and the technological. Here, the camera, the closed-circuit TV, cinematographic techniques, and the cyborg are trusted for truth telling. Reality is represented in footage seen through the eyes of multifaceted speakers.

Introducing Bhabi to the Cyborg

just so we’re clear‚ you’re not allowed to ask
how these scars came to be.
i don’t usually respond to questions
concerning lineage. i did not choose
to wake up & find my family gone.
unlike you, i am not more machine than
human. i exist in multiple halves. half water.
half wind. half gunsmoke. half eulogy.
half rage. half homeless. half patriotic.
half burnt. i am never who i say i am.
i am good at telling lies. this too is a lie.
once, a few gunmen invaded our villages.
dragged women & girls by their hijabs
into a skyless forest. we are done trying
to get used to being ushered
into the morning light
by incessant gunfire. to witness the night
here is to open yourself to the nudity
of bloodshed. when asked by a stranger
about how many people i’ve lost, i began
with my name & the dead still haven’t
stopped leaking through my mouth.
it’s better if you never ask the locals
how to dress a country’s wound
that wouldn’t stop bleeding.
i know of widowed women whose hands
have held ash from burnt bodies. it’s likely
we may never meet again. i am the type
to thirst for sleep in the middle of a world
tumbling towards its end. please,
remember me that way.