Muhammad M. Ubandoma
Muhammad M. Ubandoma is a feminist. A Nigerian poet whose work explores gender, violence, memory, grief, and the complexities of womanhood. His poetry has appeared in Chestnut Review, Fahmidan Journal, After Happy Hour Review, Strange Horizons, Dreams and Nightmares Magazine, Poetry Column, The April Centaur Magazine , Eunoia Review, AfroCritic Magazine. Brittle Paper, Spillwords Magazine, Synchronize Chaos Magazine, and Kalahari Review. He is the Winner of the Folorunsho Editors Poetry Prize (2025) and was the 1st Runner-up at the Kano International Poetry Festival Slam (2025) and 2nd Runner-up at the Kaduna Poetry Slam (2025). He was also a Finalist at the Abuja Poetry Festival (AIPFEST) in 2024, a Finalist at the Abuja Literary Society Festival (ALitFest) in 2025, and a Finalist at the Abuja Poetry Festival (ANA Slam) in 2024. His other honors include being Shortlisted for the Sevhage Poetry Prize (2024), Longlisted twice for the Splendors of Dawn Poetry Award (2024), and Shortlisted for the BCD/UTULU Prize for Twisted Thinking. Beyond his writing, Ubandoma is a member of the Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation (HCAF), Minna Branch, and serves as an Interviewer at Literature Voices Magazine (LitVo), contributing to the growth and documentation of contemporary literary voices.
THE HOUSE AFTER HER
It began with the small refusals— salt, then rice, then water.
She said everything tasted like metal, as if a nail had been driven
through her tongue and left there to remember.
My mother folded her wrapper twice before sitting,
as though the body required permission now.
We learned not to say the word, Cancer— forgive me.
Naming it might widen its mouth. It moved through her quietly.
No roar. Only the slow grammar of subtraction: her laugh thinning,
her footsteps loosening from the floor, her voice becoming something
that had to travel a long distance to reach us.
At the hospital, light gathered on her skin and would not leave.
Even her eyes held it— a yellow sun that did not belong to morning.
A basin sat by the bed. We watched her empty into it what the body
could no longer carry— as if she were returning pieces of herself
to a place that would not answer. Once, she called me by my brother’s name.
Then by no name at all. Only a sound— low, unfinished—
a door trying to close against the wind. We pretended not to notice
how she began to apologize for breathing, as if ashamed of their own persistence.
I placed my hand on her chest and waited— not for a miracle,
just for something to insist on staying. Nothing did. Morning came without asking.
The house keeps her in fragments: a cup turned upside down to dry,
a thread caught in the teeth of a comb, the shallow dent her body left in the mattress
that refuses to rise. We walk around these things like people learning a new language—
one where every sentence ends before it should.