Country Without Roses
my mother languages her grief in pellets of prayers. her patriotic tongue falls like pebbles of reckless abandon. & she stands before God dabbed with sighs of silence. here, everything unvoiced takes the shape of a wind: howling & gusting. bet you’ll find this piece a hard poem. —muzzling in the heart of her dreams. her young littered as the cadavers of war: bisected & dissected. & twilight never feeds her any soul-muse. Is of country & memory. of peace, spittled & spattered. my mother held the ember, grief & gray. & lingered into a smoldering ash. my mother is my country: black skin & velvety. but hardly her country roses back to her. say the soil of her black skin swift to desire blood. yet silence weighs in the splinter of scars. how does she pledge allegiance without decadences tracing her route of bloom?
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Escape
hold this grief: in the throat of a river. as water groping a mystery. as an escape to anneal the body to a dead resolve. & the waves dances: entrance of men shipwrecked in the depth of her grace. we become water. our crosses flood into Gethsemane. fragile bones wring of amazing grace. every time we looked toward the shore. It takes a thousand glance to nurse a truth. grief never carves a sun on a bluey day. what submerges in a body? why blood the only lingo a river knows? & everything bright and beautiful empties in skeletons? Say it’s a river with Eden’s guilt. we sail in no reparation. tidal to catch a breath off guard. say a forbidden hymn has gone before us. yet another day to curricle the thought of escape. abi grief no dey tire person? abi our own Messiah is a Calvary too far? latch this poem with the oomph to sing a new song. to walk upon a sinking river.
to regurgitate an old self before anchoring.
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Poetry: Chinemerem Prince Nwankwo
Image: Microsoft Co-Pilot AI modified