By Adesiyan Oluwapelumi
because prayer
ploughs the heart,
digging up graves.
Tonight,
in the wooden conclave
of my small indwelling
I listen for the silences
that bring witnesses
into my skeleton heart.
I watch God,
in his fine and mighty khaki
march down like a brigadier
into the battalion of my lungs.
He measures every breath
and every pause in-between.
Sometimes,
I feel his invisible eyes on my neck
guaging me to size a heifer
passing through
the mouth of a needle
or the needle passing through.
I cannot tell what
to make of this,
a crucifixion that must
become my salvation.
Or my cross to bear,
whichever is the price of joy.
Beloved,
on some good days,
my faith is plump as a rabbit.
You could cut me open
and find scriptures
thick as bone.
On other days,
I am an uncircumcised lamb
prepared for Passover.
But this is the bible of my life,
my mother carried a womb
hoping to birth light.
I, child of sorrows and prayers.
I pray in litanies of verse
because prayer is poetry.
To compose a poem
is to start a fire.
I am an arsonist,
like God, who struck
lightning against thunder
and watched the sky burn.
I do not know the difference
between a living body and the dead.
I do not know the distance
between hope and repair
But this is how I imagine God—
closer than my body.
BIO:
ADESIYAN OLUWAPELUMI, TPC XI, is a medical student, poet, essayist & Poetry Editor of Fiery Scribe Review from Nigeria. Winner of the Gbemisola Adeoti Poetry Prize (2025), An Unserious Collective, Adroit Journal Summer Program, HUES Foundation & SprinNG Writers’ Fellow.