Nouveau Sonata
night & the poet plots his way in a dark
room. thin threads of light spun on his
sheaf of papers. windows shut &
grieving with ideas. brimming
with tears— coniferous ice
effulgent like small teeth
cascading down a snake-like
wind dredging tremor & souls.
an ashen ghost plotting
a coup on the radio. sweet riotous
cry, outside the field. fire lining rave;
the song harpooning the crest
of the saint. suckled sugar-plum—
fingers somewhere the pillow of the
head has refused to unroll.
in the forest, a shindig bereft of din & flow.
tired mouths docked at
bay of sea-spit two hands
large as airy-wings piercing the white
of the sky. a chiseled anthill
in the memorious savannah. all mirrors
in the house sharded
& splayed burrowed deep
the tendril of images drowned by clarinet
hymns. roofs perforated
by singing bullets. bodies serenading
the fall like suture of two
bird claws— licked & spat dirt
in a cubicle of bouncing
light. a shepard boy in his leanness
traverses the field round yolked in
thorns & wolves. what tree best he hide?
A Poem to Read From Right to Left
After Othuke Umukoro
you tell I where poem the of part that is This
already you but; father my miss I much How
about talk to going just am I so ,don’t I Know
—man burnt a like is city burnt A .cities Burning
eating force paralysed A .colour without Shade
the under hidden is Rest. blight like hopes All
the for rest no is there meaning ;dove a of Foot
existence natural into city a cry shall We. Restless
we ,noon of repose that In .fire bear it watch and
.tomorrow of flowering the watch and sit will
and ,plump ,fat ;arrive will tomorrow first at How
grief its But .yesterday than Resplendent .pregnant
she say cannot mother my ;bucket a fill Cannot
broke which straw last the remember doesn’t
.him of front in unclad standing is she when ,Her
chest dark Her .irises grows still chest dark Her
musics still chest dark Her .petunias enchants still
Everything .eventually folds Everything .daffodils
.fire of tongue the to bends still forgetting needing
Image
Lamb—body like glass, fragile on the
hardest places. Two children,
kite flying, hands strapped in
a prayer. The muezzins croon
into the gape of a lilac. Holy
bodies draped in a filament of
light. Children latched on their
mothers’ backs. Plural for sad-
ness, escaping the hole of an
alley—who sings into the night
and expects a light feathered
thing? Just when you followed
the Imam into the dusty brown
room, and find that the moist
has swept clean the memories.
The memories of Aisha and Isatu.
You can only rekindle the fire
that was always there. The touch
like a twig erupts the crammed
spaces of metaphors and toads
rearing into the glabella. I would
like to think of myself as helpless
or unfavored, but doesn’t every
miracle begin with a smoke in
the duct? I first have to know I
am alone in the business of
suffering at its pecking order.
Two canvases; two slimy ducks.
Eating their way through frost—
radio bites, and the windowsill
still swallows crust. The footprints
of two stories, in the end, never
adjoin as one. One keeper at a time.
About the Poet