By Paul Chibuike Emenike
You’ll wake to a smothering September,
smeared with the indigoed footprints of
a ripening day.
Rain crackling outside like applause,
rain spacing between your static sentences
& warped window.
Our Father, who sleeps in heaven, this
present tense is his last lifeboat,
his most hallowed syntax,
because a bird in hand is only real
than two pigeons in a burning bush. Words,
how limitless in their limitations
make nothing possible. But tell him
how to shore, how to measure the roving mathematics
of a grief-glazed eye drowning into the small seafoam
of its own shipwreck. No, there are no thorns
in the plank of the cross.
Let your wheel be swung on earth, as it is in heaven,
& let water break another placenta into the shock of breath.
No, there are no sparks in the christening of a name,
only water—bland, bleak, boring water.
For God saw this & made a rainbow,
a scent-pollution blooming across the page-blank sky.
We are a people with a talent for second chances.
Rainbow. Ark. The golden flood.
So much for temptation, for trespassing—
for temptation is a kind of trespassing.
This, our earth-sung prodigal,
sharpened in the blacksmithing of desires,
of dreams bright enough
to mimic the shadow of the cross.
God is good. Flour him this day his daily bread,
so that his body, exiting this night-old body of slumber
may rankle in its own percussion
of bones. Bones so marooned & marrowed by grace.
BIO:
Paul Chibuike Emenike is a Nigerian visual artist and poet whose work explores Afro-cultural themes, urban life, and the shifting landscapes of contemporary Nigeria. His writings have appeared in The Shallow Tales Review, THISDAY Newspaper, The Illumination Magazine, Brittle Paper, The April Centaur, Afrocritik, African Writers Magazine, and elsewhere. He lives and works in Jos and is currently developing his debut collection of poems.