Crossing Benue
after reading Nnadi Samuel
burnt consonants laid at my feet.
I begin this poem where the vowel ends.
it ends inside a lagoon. this voyage, a
journey into history. I name my boat with
a foreign sobriquet. my prayer tastes like rainfall.
what I share with this cabin are adjectives too
soft for ruin. I language from something elastic
like pain. my body worn out by a long stretch. I
didn’t say earlier. but, I have been grabbling with my
tongue to lick the lateral light in the glory of the lord.
what I speak, are blue ashes waiting to purple. grace
came to pass. & so did grief. & so did all the
bodies in the Atlantic. sometimes, I do not touch the
silence that deluges the entrance of an hour. because,
when time breaks the mud of our bodies, the waters
cannot hold it together. this is where the river
leans backwards into the mouth of God in search
of a healing. I cast a net of hope. &
what is it that recedes from the mouth of a dead dolphin
if not a story of slavery? I cross the water.
& I cross back. & I cross back. & I cross back.
& I cross back. & I cross back. & I cross
into the mouth of a loud consonant.
A Long Walk Downtown
Downtown with the world turning upside down in my head.
I run into a woman collecting wilted flowers in a basket.
They say joy comes in the morning, doesn’t it?
I watch a myriad of children chase down a car like moths going after LED lights as the driver pulls over to buy some papers.
I watch them recede with fallen eyelids. Some of them scouring the gutters for luck.
Too bad, of all the beautiful places in this city, a boy seeks to find fortune inside a ditch.
From a distant minaret, the muezzin calls for prayer.
& in his voice, there was a hand stretching into a latex tree, into a skyscraper, into wings, into Icarus to touch glory at the circumference of the sun.
He screamed again. & this time, the hand couldn’t even find its body again.
I walked & walked many miles without a purpose.
I only wanted to walk out of my head —where the world wasn’t upside down —to a place where I would look outside my window
—in the morning sunshine —& kiss a songbird.