Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi, Frontier I, is a Nigerian-Hausa poet, digital artist, and photographer from Bobi. She is an undergraduate student of Medical Laboratory Science at Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto, winner of the inaugural Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature '23 and Gimba Suleiman Hassan Gimba ESQ Poetry Prize '22, a Pushcart Nominee and Best of The Net Nominee. Her works can be found in Strange Horizons, Fiyah Literary Magazine, Agbowo, Arc Poetry Magazine, Ake Review, Native Skin, The Drift, Lucent Dreaming, 20.35 Africa, Trampset, and elsewhere. Follow her on Twitter.
A SPEECH ON HOW TO KNOT A HAUSA TONGUE
Standing on the fodium,
frefaring to give a speech
on how to fasten a tongue,
I make my C hold its reflection
on every P-word
that four out of my mouth
to stof me from fronounzing
words like fretty, feofle, fray, fain
wrongly and at the tif where my tongue
is a measure of how much English
it can hold without breaking,
slightly tight to form a bridge
between my voice and the mic,
I ended the speech saying,
flease, learn to ferfect your fronounzations.
Thank you.
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