Repetition, as a poetic device, can make a poem seem like a mouthful and increase the risk of boring one’s reader but in “Wishes”, Liberian poet, Arthur Shedrick Davies employs it with such admirable elegance! Also, we love(d) that the metaphors were both sizzling and shocking all at once and we are more than delighted to share.

– Editorial Team

Wishes

I’ve never exhaled my wishes on stars, nor
blown any on some birthday candle lamp.
But if I should whisper one, it would bear
a face birthed from the womb of a miracle.

If a wish should steal a taste of my voice,
find residence on my tongue buds,
just for a minute, then let it be that I’d wish,

death loses power in his name, that life’s
knuckles knock him so hard to a point
the grave would reject his corpse, and deny him
any right to a tombstone carved in his honor;

I’d wish, sorrow grows wings, flee from the eyes
of the afflicted, and erect a home in a coffin that’s
well furnished by the hands of forever; I’d wish,

that worries vomit themselves from the spine
of an innocent wo/man, that poverty uproots
its tooth from the jaws of the underhanded, and
roots itself deep down the throat of some hungry
dark ditch where sunlight dares not to stare; I’d wish,

that healing construct a heart/ a heart to compose
a pulsation, twice the size of a generation, for every heart
we’ve buried through the seasons, for every
one of them which has lost the rhythm of its beat; I’d

wish that heaven was a person; that eternity descends
from the heights of paradise, incarnates to the body
of a goddess, and woo mankind with the glories

of everlastings. Clearly, these are too many mysteries
for a day, but I’d simply wish today is a blessing
born with the credentials to cleanse and redeem.

Read Also: Two Poems By Ogah Friday David

Contributor’s Bio

Arthur Shedrick Davies is a voice from Liberia, a poet with budding emotions to be echoed; a stalker of literature, and a studying scientist. He writes about humanity, moral values, and principles of life. Some of his poems have found a home in The Ducor Review, Powerpoetry Publication, and forthcoming in Breaking The Silence: Anthology of Liberian Literature.