HYDROLOGY by Chiwenite Onyekwelu

HYDROLOGY by Chiwenite Onyekwelu

by | Dec 21, 2020 | CONTESTS, POEMS

black woman

HYDROLOGY

by Chiwenite Onyekwelu

Hydrology – Winner of the 2020 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

You were my first undoing. You 

       whom I met at the shorelines of my life.

In the sizzling of oatmeal too close 

      to ruins      the television bright eyed on 

Saturday nights     & the crisp chattering 

      of Ludo seeds, I took care to hold you at 

an aunty’s distance. How come you 

      blurred the lines & met me unguarded.

I wanted to be a child that very night: 

       soft & fragile & yet untouched.

But you held me in your mouth, 

       weightless as I was. You led me by the  

hand into your deeps. How the river 

      swallows an eel    & was I not the victim 

 

                    of a turbulence that 

         began with you alone? 

Now, all my childhood days stand 

       against me. This body bears witness to a 

borrowed tide. The wounds fresh as spring 

have immortalized you in all the wrong places. 

& yes,   I’ve been bleeding my whole life.

              I keep sinking halfway to the shore.

But healing is an expertise I’m willing

        to learn. In this way, I come out drenched,

yet alive, with enough breath to begin again.

Photo credit: Photo by Waldir Évora from Pexels

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHIWENITE ONYEKWELU’S works have been published or are forthcoming on America Media, Brittle Paper, Kreative Diadem, ZenPens and elsewhere. He was a runner up for the Foley Poetry Contest 2020, a finalist for Stephen A. Dibiase Poetry Contest 2020 and winner of the Christopher Okigbo Poetry Prize 2019 for his poem “The Origin of Wings”. He was also shortlisted for the Kreative Diadem Annual Writing Contest 2019 and was the 2nd prize winner of the Newman Writing Contest (NMWC) 2017. Chiwenite studies pharmacy at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.

A MEDALLION IS A SMALL THING by Oluwadare Popoola

A MEDALLION IS A SMALL THING by Oluwadare Popoola

by | Sep 1, 2020 | Isolation, Isolation-Poetry

woman wearing white sleeveless lace shirt

A medallion is a small thing

by Oluwadare Popoola

For Michael Olajumoke

 

Joys come in measured orders,

and when you arrived from the desert,

I saw the geysers of a stream

in your eye,

carrying a desolation.

 

Your body is the utopia for a measure of desolation,

because you, a woman

is the lush of a countryside

built from the war.

 

Your body, an epigram

points in the direction of love

like the torn legs of a war-struck thing

still picking an abode in disarmament.

 

And in your songs,

if joy were a small thing,

it would be stuck between your sadness.

 

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)

A medallion is a small thing

by Oluwadare Popoola | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OLÚWÁDÁRE PÓPÓỌLA is a poet or so he thinks, a student of Microbiology and a Sportswriter for a media company. He writes from a city by the rocks and longs to see the world without discrimination of any form. He is learning how images are made from words and his poems are up/forthcoming on Mineral Lit. Magazine, Headline Poetry & Press, Feral: A Journal of Poetry & Art and ang(st)zine.

RELIC OF GRIEF by Oluwadare Popoola

RELIC OF GRIEF by Oluwadare Popoola

by | Sep 1, 2020 | Isolation, Isolation-Poetry

sad bald man

Relic of Grief

by Oluwadare Popoola

a coloured thing,

black coloured as a friday wake-keep,

arch heir of death,

skin lurking as a memory site for the revolt of a republican,

dulling a memory refilled with what he could have been,

becoming a clam to escape its own silence,

where it is exactly hidden

between the stop of mother

before she picks up the next prayer for the government.

but silence is innuendo alright

and she still gives consent[

with her mouth twiddling into a rosary bead,

a relic of grief

searching for the creator’s numen

and then the panther sleeps on an ocean again

in desolation.

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)

Relic of Grief

by Oluwadare Popoola | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OLÚWÁDÁRE PÓPÓỌLA is a poet or so he thinks, a student of Microbiology and a Sportswriter for a media company. He writes from a city by the rocks and longs to see the world without discrimination of any form. He is learning how images are made from words and his poems are up/forthcoming on Mineral Lit. Magazine, Headline Poetry & Press, Feral: A Journal of Poetry & Art and ang(st)zine.

A MAN’S BORDERLINE TO OVERCOMING LONELINESS by Oluwadare Popoola

A MAN’S BORDERLINE TO OVERCOMING LONELINESS by Oluwadare Popoola

by | Sep 1, 2020 | Isolation, Isolation-Poetry

art back view backlit boy

A MAN’S BORDERLINE TO OVERCOMING LONELINESS

by Oluwadare Popoola

there is familiarity,

a twinkle in our eyes for unknown places

that beg a birdsong to settle

for one of milky eyes or murderous ears.

a chalice or wine.

 

I don’t think I know the crevices of insanity well,

but it sure looks like a jagged muscle

from a mouth tilted in the position of a rig-saw.

 

you leave the ninety-nine

and come after my body,

measuring slabs of it with your eyes,

resectioning its tissues with your teeth,

cooking it with spices from the internet.

& then you see

that you have cooked up a ghost.

it’s a white coat carrying rashes,

something you call letters

or a relic of it

that soon becomes songs.

 

you bathe them in your spittle

and give them a home in photographs

or tie them to a group of wintering bluebirds

and in electronic papers that are all apparitions.

calories wasting & eyes singeing.

 

you go to the kitchen to search for lost energy,

sleep and dream that I became your neighbour

and woke up to ninety-nine retweets.

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)

A MAN'S BORDERLINE TO OVERCOMING LONELINESS

by Oluwadare Popoola | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OLÚWÁDÁRE PÓPÓỌLA is a poet or so he thinks, a student of Microbiology and a Sportswriter for a media company. He writes from a city by the rocks and longs to see the world without discrimination of any form. He is learning how images are made from words and his poems are up/forthcoming on Mineral Lit. Magazine, Headline Poetry & Press, Feral: A Journal of Poetry & Art and ang(st)zine.

THE MEETING by Seun Lari-Williams

THE MEETING by Seun Lari-Williams

by | Sep 1, 2020 | Isolation, Isolation-Poetry

two person in long sleeved shirt shakehand

The Meeting

by Seun Lari-Williams

A pandemic meets an old man on the road.

Who is this who is not afraid of me? It asks.

You must be religious, I believe.

Which of the gods do you worship?

 

I am not religious, the old man replies,

I must go about my business.

You must be immune, then, the pandemic says,

or perhaps you have found a cure?

 

I really don’t care, the old man groans,

my business is urgent, I must go.

Then surely, you are foolish, the pandemic retorts.

Have you not heard the reports?

 

I am hunger, the old man began,

I’ve been here since the world began.

Wars and diseases, they come and they go.

None has lived as long as I have.

You burn at both ends; your end is near.

I burn slow like fine firewood.

Keep them indoors and fill them with fright,

but when I knock, they come right out.

 

Your reputation precedes you, the pandemic responds

and bows before the old man.

They kiss, hug and shake hands like old friends and

smile knowingly at each other.

 

The old man takes his leave and continues his routine—

knocking on doors and turning knobs.

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)

The Meeting

by Seun Lari-Williams | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SEUN LARI-WILLIAMS was born in Lagos on 28th April 1987. He is a lawyer, poet, and flutist. His first anthology – Garri for Breakfast, was longlisted for the 2017 NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature. His poem, ‘A Little Violence’, won the second prize in the 2019 Guardian Newspaper Poetry Competition. He is married to his best friend, Feyi and they reside in Munich, Germany where he is a DAAD Scholar for a masters’ degree in intellectual property law.