Five Tan-Renga Poems by Uchechukwu Onyedikam & Christina Chin

 

5 Tan-Renga Poems

Uchechukwu Onyedikam (italic)

Christina Chin (plain)

deep afrobeat 

from the nextdoor 

open and close

a shared wall thins

to a drumskin

the devotees’ worship 

with an alignment  

beaded blue

each blue sphere 

a captive storm

the dance

of Agbogho Mmuo

raising earth

the clay itself 

to dust

village vigilance 

what goes around 

Èṣù

crossroads

the messenger smiles

after the downpour 

in large numbers 

akụ

the soil’s green  

counts in yams

Christina Chin is a painter and haiku poet from Malaysia. She is a four-time recipient of top 100 in the mDAC Summit Contests, exhibited at the Palo Alto Art Center, California. 1st prize winner of the 34th Annual Cherry Blossom Sakura Festival 2020 Haiku Contest. 1st prize winner in the 8th Setouchi Matsuyama 2019 Photohaiku Contest. She has been published in numerous journals, multilingual journals, and anthologies, including Japan's prestigious monthly Haikukai Magazine.

Uchechukwu Onyedikam is a Nigerian creative artist based in Lagos, Nigeria.  His poems have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Brittle Paper, Poetic Africa, Hood Communists, The Hooghly Review, and in print anthologies.  Christina Chin and he have co-published Pouring Light on the Hills (2022)