Always a joy to watch a poet recycle dark emotions and make something stunning out of them. Franklyn Orode, the author of Ashes of Orange Dreams, does this so effortlessly in his poem, Haunted Room.
– Editorial Team
This room is now a shrinking continent
A vast watery deep of prickling emptiness
Where our tongues once spew large fireballs
And made us burnt boys in dancing flames
Our faces, being cemeteries of buried fingers
From awaken embers of sleeping volcanoes
Two solitary figurines hugging tightly their umbra
Sipping oxygen from brimming floods of silence
This place is just too cramped a country for two
It was before these deities we fought the last war
When I died with your scalpel stuck on my back
Still I rise with your name clenched on my fists
And make a photo album for your ugly gods
I can still perceive the stench of our memories
My blood stains on your carnivorous conscience
We are back again like birds with broken wings
Still trying to pluck you out of my nervous system
For this generous stab you lovingly gave to me
I wish the moon would snatch me away to her room
And let me find sleep on her matrimonial bed
Some where far far away from this haunted room
About The Author
Franklyn Orode is a creative writer from Nigeria having a strong bias for poetry and prose. He is a graduate of civil engineering from the University of Benin. He sees poetry as a way of finding momentary escape from the vicissitudes of life. Franklyn’s works have been published on Eboquills, SprinNg, poetry cooperative, PIN, WRR, and elsewhere. He is the curator of the covid-19 themed poetry anthology EARTH ON A WHEELCHAIR and also the author of ASHES OF ORANGE DREAMS his first published poetry collection. Franklyn writes from anywhere his engineering practice takes him to.
