LITANY OF A DYING FATHER
During the Biafran war,
my father mastered the symphony of dying,
bullets begging his flesh for a home.
I do not know how he got here—in a sea of bodies
shredding under the weight of gunfire;
waiting, bullet-bound, upright,
playing dead until dying became a hobby.
Now nothing startles him anymore.
His bloodshot eye, graceless, numb to catastrophe.
Last week, when masked gunmen stopped his car
on the Umuahia–Badagry express road, he did not flinch.
He handed them the keys, his wallet,
& the pocket-size picture of me he had in his ripped
jeans.
I think of grief as carnivorous, eating through
the flesh of everything called love, morphing his body
into an unholy sacrament.
My father has always been running—feet drawn
toward the edge of a knife.
My mother prays for him, night after night.
Her mouth, a chimney of burnt supplications,
lowers him gently, six feet deep into prayer.
Before the war, there was enough:
joy, freedom like birds rocketing the sky.
Now, we utter “joy” like a timid girl
stuttering over the first red stain on her dress. Filthy
words.
Everything slipped through our palms.
We play suspects & get caught. We play dead & get
killed.
I testify to the wanting.
Each day we tiptoe the fragile road of existence,
deer scared of who will obey a bullet next.
ADULTING
Like a moth, I spun through childhood,
wings bursting out of my spine,
and woke an adult, barefooted.
I wanted to hang
longer in the chrysalis;
soft, unfinished, untouched by worries.
This morning
a robin fell from my lintel
and broke its wings.
That is how it begins:
something small collapsing
without warning.
My mind drifts to rooms
it once survived in,
harvests old joy before the ache ripens.
My father says
stray dogs are dangerous.
That hunger makes them predators.
Daily, I take the looks of a dog.
Feed on anything with light in its blood,
including myself–a dreamer.
There are caves in my head
full of dead memories.
Nightmares clawing at my skull.
Most nights, I sit in silence,
trampling on delicate dreams,
stirring the dust of time.
Given the chance, I would return
as nothing urgent. Just me, barefoot
in childhood, digging earth with both hands,
building sandcastles that do not require insurance.
CONVERSATION WITH LUCK
dawn & luck struts past my door in burnished boots head high shoulders puffed with good news he does not stop to say hi so i run after him, my voice scattering along the street like broken glass, screaming those things in your hands belong to me but luck is a minute hand ticking across abandoned clocks he quickens his steps pretending not to hear his memory slurring he forgets his people those who wail at his feet with palms upturned he forgets the ones who chant his name until their mouths bled luck wears that faux grin bright like sunflowers rinsed in morning light the grin he wore when our fathers sank into the Atlantic when war bit into the flesh of my country and chewed without shame when things at home began unravelling like loose thread he stood there smiling teeth too white to taste our grief today i catch him grip his ankles just like Jacob he fights but i watch his breath shorten why is your face always shiny i ask my face only reflects my duty to make others smile he responds panting then why do your clients carry hunger in their eyes i demand his pupils widen his knees buckle and luck collapses sometimes greater forces pin me down just like you’re doing now and whip my hands until i wilt I swear not every misfortune is my fault he dips his index finger into dust presses it to his tongue swears on his life your country that’s not me that was men in suits and boots and oil-slicked tongues i tell him trade your last burden for freedom he opens his bag hands me a bundle of cracked smiles says it’s all he’s got says he fights daily battles too that the ones who win look lucky but are mostly just greedy.
THIS CITY ONCE WORE BEAUTY…
it was stripped bare by fire. Peace is the debt we pay
to
exist. fire is another language–
to
spark life out of dunghill.
try ravaging memory and see how we
once
entered spring through its mouth,
watching
the garden of dreams
bloom like lilies. last summer, a dying man
planted
life in the garden of his wife’s belly,
only
to catch weeds in the wreckage.
like war in Palestine dissipating the tender hopes of lives.
I
leave to live. I wear the wrong skin in the streets,
haggle
with life and return home with chaos.
see how I burn. see how I scrape my
tongue,
teach it to scream let there be
light just to watch the articulation of flames.
every word is an instruction depending
on
how faithful your tongue is– like
how
mine betrays me, delighting chaos
dear God, like a toddler, teach me the steps of abscission.
GHOSTED
I bit the hand that fed me
because I love the taste of a
man's blood.
It
tasted holy, too rich to swallow.
I kept the taste in my mouth for days.
But I am a raven—I
bite every giver.
My mother once took me to a prophet
who said I was possessed. He could see
the
demons circling in my eyes
I laughed. He was right.
I am haunted by the faces of absences.
Like the friend who ghosted me
for
refusing to wear his desires,
leaving
me talking to my own blue ticks.
Now, I make myself my best company.
I run into the void when the
world chokes my sanity.
He said my creator dragged me
into the earth without my consent.
Tell
me, which god creates without permission?
Would I still be human
if my consent had been sought?
Maybe
I’d just be another bird
chirping into the void, biting all the hands that feed me,
ghosting life itself
until
life
ghosts
me
back.
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