MY MOTHER’S DAUGHTER SPELLS HER NAME BACKWARD by Anthony Okpunor

MY MOTHER’S DAUGHTER SPELLS HER NAME BACKWARD by Anthony Okpunor

MY MOTHER’S DAUGHTER SPELLS HER NAME BACKWARD

by Anthony Okpunor

what is that in your mouth
your mock your father’s silence before it becomes
                                                            girls who do not spell the alphabets in your name correctly
                                   you say it’s bitter drinking from an ocean
but
                                                                                  you love the color of bitterness
what part of you isn’t crazy
madness is love sometimes
                                the truth is you once cared for your father
talk about your science teacher
               did he not say the earth revolves with you in it
it is vain to accept love without accepting sadness first
your name is different in every language
                                 no one knows what’s wrong with you
                                 your hand is a road map
                                 your dead lovers are road maps
                                 your bitten tongue is a road map
a road map is what is lost after naming a body of water
a road map is your skin beautiful with different boys calling it white
not-white       caucasian      olive-brown       jewish                         there are some words that fit into leaking tongues
  your skin is quick and brief—something bitten into black
boys yawn before biting at your flesh
biting into rocks with honey
it means you should cook before it’s late at night
                                                                             the world has it that bad dreams come with late
night foods
but your worries are different        aren’t they
in the morning you will notice that songs float in every bird’s tongue
so do not worry about what died on your face
what flew from your mother and burned your house down
your mother beats your younger brother’s mouth for cursing
   & those words always fall back into yours
you like the way your brother screams in pain
your mother is always blind from anger
again your worries are different
 
you know though
you dance your body into the depth of water and it stings your mother’s heart
you should teach young men who visit
                                    that a boat inside you do not sail with lovers

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthony Okpunor is a Nigerian writer who discovered poetry and writing in general, as a better form of self-expression from his early school days. He lives and writes from Asaba in Delta State. He is a student of the University of Benin at the time. He splits his time between writing, reading, lectures, good epic music, and himself. His works have appeared in several online platforms including African Writers and Praxis Magazine.

Winners of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest

Winners of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest

Winners of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Creative Writing Contest.

Poetry Category

 
Honourable mentions:
 
“The city is my family” by Michael Ifeanyi Akuchie
“What to imagine” by Yusuff Uthman Adekola
 

 

Flash Fiction Category

 
Honourable mentions:
 
“The step breaks your confidence” by Ezinne Okeke
“Souls and Smoke” by Justin Clement

 

Congratulations to the winners!
We had intended to release a list of ten longlisted writers in each genre; however, many of the entries were of poor quality. We look forward to receiving better entries next year.

Winning entries for flash fiction were chosen by TJ Benson, author of ‘We Won’t Fade into Darkness’ (Parresia 2018). The winning poems were selected by Wale Owoade, poet and founding editor of Expound Magazine.

Regarding the flash fiction entries, TJ Benson writes:
“I was looking for fresh stories, stories that were hidden in plain sight every day, remarkable but abandoned. However, the poor writing floored me. So, I decided I would make do with coherence of thought. In that sense, ‘The House Called Joy’ is the most ‘complete’ story.  ‘Souls and smoke’ has a lot of vivid imageries, but the writing wasn’t honest enough, especially the perspective of a suicide bomber’s family. I was lost halfway.
Also, I sought innovation in prose. Chizoma invites you, in his writing, to watch him try to contain a self in a diagnosis and fail. This is true of human life. There is an almost unaware virtuosity in how he links random elements observed by “you”, his first-person singular narrator: ‘…a woman leaning in towards you over the counter to hand you crisp notes, her hair smelling of talcum powder, a baby turning to flash you a dazzling smile right before you do the sign of the cross in church, a newscaster saying that the price of pampers had risen.’”

 

Regarding the poetry entries, Wale Owoade writes:
“The entries are ambitious for an under 21-year old poetry competition. The five shortlisted poets were primarily selected based on their use of imageries and how their techniques connect the reader’s senses to their subjects and objects, a quality that sets them apart from other entrants. However, the winning poems were selected based on the clarity of their expression and poets’ diction. CJ Onyedikachi’s winning poem is a brilliant piece of art, his engaging imageries and contextual diction demonstrate his staunch dedication to his craft. Altogether, most of the entrants to this year’s prize only need a few editorial guidance to write the next best poems from Nigeria. It will be amazing if my contemporaries could create a little time to offer critical guidance and editorial mentorship to younger writers.”
We wish to express our gratitude to our sponsors, the judges, and all the writers who participated in this year’s contest.
The annual contest aims to recognize the best writings from Nigerian writers age 21 and below. The maiden edition which held in 2017 was judged by Sueddie Vershima Agema (Flash Fiction) and Okwudili Nebeolisa (Poetry).

GIRLS LIKE YOU HAVE NO HISTORY by Angel Nwobodo

GIRLS LIKE YOU HAVE NO HISTORY by Angel Nwobodo

GIRLS LIKE YOU HAVE NO HISTORY

by Angel Nwobodo

Girls like you have no history – Second Runner-up of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

i
Women like us carry shame in our names – mother.

ii
Your mother shows you pictures of her – the honey-gold beauty that is her skin, the thick docility tucked in her small body and your Father’s gaze lost in the fiery brown pits that are her eyes. You trace the line where their hands fold into each other, their bodies enclosed in a familiarity that confuses you, bewilders you. Your Father whispers something in her ear and she lets out a shy, mechanic laughter, something that rings in your ears later because you keep comparing it with the unrestrained summer that is your mother’s. Your mother sticks a knife where her mouth opens and you know she is carving a home for silence.

 

You see the next picture as you head to her shop at the mall, the one Father pays for each month with a cheque addressed to the manager, the one she pays for with his cooked meals and his starched suits and her wild-summer laughter behind closed doors. You see them with little moving pictures of themselves, three little boys with her honey-gold skin and her fiery brown eyes and your mother looks at you with regret because the image stuck to your body has no claim of her, you are all your Father.
This is the new woman in our lives, Ada. This is the solid proof of my shame.
Her voice is a deep shade of sorrow and you realize she has lost this war even before it started.

iii
You will learn that girls with no homes tucked beneath their skin are like birds who never learnt to weave nests. You will learn it from your Father and you will learn it from your mother. You will remember this on days you crave for the laughter in your father’s voice and find nothing but empty memories.

 

You will learn that the truth changes nothing- each day your mother will appear with his cooked meals and his starched suits and a smile on her face like old paint peeling from walls because any fire can be quenched by the silence of a man’s face.

You will learn that you can surrender your consciousness for the taste of a man’s mouth, for the feeling that loving gives you, like your mother did.

You will realize that girls like you were not made to find love, that they are like ghosts, looking for love and for names and for histories in strange faces just to come to life. That your mother was one of these girls. That like you, she has no claim over your Father. That like you, she was only meant to fit her body in small spaces of light to get rid of her own darkness.

You will realize then, with grief so palpable your chest splits in two, you are the echo of your mother’s shame.

SHE FORGETS SHE’S A WOMAN by Abu Bakr Sadiq

SHE FORGETS SHE’S A WOMAN by Abu Bakr Sadiq

SHE FORGETS SHE’S A WOMAN

by Abu Bakr Sadiq

She forgets she’s a woman – First Runner-up of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

I’ve watched her body grow in leaps
Breaking the boundaries of sins unseen
Where women are forbidden to dream
Of stretching the cries on their hands to
She forgets the songs carved into her body
Hates to be reminded of the broken choruses
Her tongue had drawn her mind to death
Trying to keep to memory

She forgets she’s from a land of ashes
Where women are unfinished novellas
Written without titles
By sages who only spoke in silence

 

Some days, she unfolds into a song
Empties the gray haired lyrics
Bottled deep in her throat
On the circled edges of my heart
Until her voice is the only tune in my ribcage

She forgets the names tied to her neck
Answers to every noun too strong for vessels like her
Weak; she forgets her shadows in the kitchen
Allows her body to freely entwine
With the frozen smokes treading the skies

 

Some days, I want to envy her
But envy is not a song for men like me
The boys who taught me how to be a man
Said men are rap songs

With sounds of gunshots of their hooks
And lyrics jiggered by the rhythm of their messages
Who forget everything their bodies
Were never meant to be, and go chasing after
Women who’ve forgotten they are women

 

Some days, she cries her body to sleep
And calls it an act of bravery at dawn
Says that’s how women become men
Without asking who took the who

 

Out of the who whom their womanhood
Was ought to be defined by
A lot times, that’s how she forgets she’s a woman

MY FATHER HEW OUT HIMSELF ON MY SKIN by CJ Onyedikachi

MY FATHER HEW OUT HIMSELF ON MY SKIN by CJ Onyedikachi

MY FATHER HEW OUT HIMSELF ON MY SKIN

by CJ Onyedikachi

My Father Hew Out Himself on My Skin – Winner of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

& my body like the blue bed—called a man
to existence. My father’s mouth’s the size
of a Song thrush—I linger for his morning rhapsody.
The third time, in a year, he marks my body.
& he says these spots are love. A father’s
way of burning the little leech.
I wear his brooch of forms while I grow like a weed on a fence.
He says, sometimes, I am as mild as the sea
& haunting as Chucky. I relax
and days after it falls out like a nail unstable.
My father is a chap with grass blessing his
bed of pink flesh. He buys his seeds with naira notes
given. He blisters the nipples of
a female—not mother’s—& cast a joke about it like
a clown on a pearly stage.
He pours gin on a skull; he prays I find myself in a net.
He prays to his roots, but I’m clay in feet.
too much eyes on a fem boy.
It feels like night in my body. My father dies
in one of our conversations.
He’s like a child with fairy gifts. I turn out
like Blacks on a ship sailing to America.
My father builds dreams on a rainforest
like drought it dries.

 

 

MAY THE LAND BE TRULY SECULAR by Kamarudeen Mustapha

MAY THE LAND BE TRULY SECULAR by Kamarudeen Mustapha

MAY THE LAND BE TRULY SECULAR

by Kamarudeen Mustapha

MAY THE LAND BE TRULY SECULAR (For Leah Sharibu)
We peel peace layer by layer
Till nothing remains of our sanity
We betray all orderliness at home
Till gloating terror ambushes our
bravest hopes
Then, we start again
We pile terror layer by layer
On pedestals of our bravest hopes
Until we hatch heartless wars
Shrouding us front and black
In our fray for self justification
We have disemboweled the deodorant air
We let loose the flatulent bowel
Of the Mongudu mammoth
Choking us with horrors hovering
All over our space

 

 

Only Leah Sharibu has some faith
In the land’s claim to be secular
 
She told the heart of terror
“I am a Christian and I deserve to live …”

 

 

O let her faith suffice her
And may the land be truly secular
Like the God of Peace bides
“No compulsion in religion.”

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Kamarudeen Mustapha writes short stories and poems. He is a teacher based at Ibadan, Nigeria. His poems and short stories have been published in Our Poetry Archive, African writer.com and Setu inline magazine. He had also had poems published in few anthologies apart from self-publishing some children story books like Zinari the Golden Boy, Winners Never Quit and The Magic Bird among others.

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