One of you
Do not ask me again Why I hop from tree to tree like a monkey It is because I am in a frantic search For healing herbs for my bedridden country And just as the thunder’s applause welcomes the rain And the torch of lightening…
Tell Papa
Ujunwa, have they told papa that I am a story wrapped in a parcel, Held in place by a colorful ribbon of tears? Did papa believe them when they told him, That I am the ashes of burnt dreams, Waiting to be whisked away by…
A Letter to Dawn
As soon as mama weaned me
Papa stood by the corners of my mouth
With a gourd, full of wisdom
And told me; “Drink, my child, drink!
For life is a journey through a desert
Where there are no oases.”
Come Watch Me, Dance Naked
Jaachi, I am the tree which died in the seedlings you refused to tend. I am a memory you cannot drown in a keg of palm-wine, for like a feather, I will float upon the rivers of your thoughts till you recall and regret the night when you abandoned a broken flute at the village square, for I am that flute and wholeness found me in the hands of a drummer boy who lost his drumsticks.
Bonfire
God is like that favorite red dress she got on her tenth birthday. she loves it so much but it no longer fits. Her father never stopped saying she was a poem he wrote in her mother’s body & forgot its lines. So when he…
BRITTLE
my father’s voice is a dark hole. when I was six, I fell into it, tasted his liquid darkness and I became a light- too bright for the prying eyes of dawn. In my sojourn, I have climbed seven mountains of tears and crossed ten…
A TALE OF MIGRATORY LOCUSTS & HOLOCAUST
They said the moon would weep with us when death eats supper in our huts but as soon as the sun slept off, she sharpened the claws of the stars &led them to our huts Watch how you hold the words of this poem ‘cos…
Derivatives of Silence
. a lady is holding god’s obituary- she painted it on a canvas of pain with the crayons of his silence she is saying; “i’m not an artist but i watched god die in the tears of a little boy, who was born with a…
Solitude: A Poem By Ehi-kowochio Ogwiji
On the shelf of solitude, silence is a book, with black & white pages, telling stories which died on their way to the village square; like that of Enem Ogodoo, the one who spent a lifetime, oiling a flute which would play the first note…
Irene II
Both Ehi and Blessing were at Irene’s funeral last weekend. Clad in sparkling white knee-length gowns, hands folded across their chest, they stood by her graveside. Blessing was crying- no- wailing so loudly that Ehi was beginning to feel like her heart was hewn from…