Fretwire: Work in Progress – Poems by Uche Nduka

FRETWIRE: Work in Progress

• in the black marrow
  you spun his habit,
  lent it to the air,
  to a
  quadrille,

  left it voluptuously
  unsandalled.

  #

  even
  your open collar
  can see that tragedy
  whelps&laughs&purrs
  on
  oily sandwiches

  pounded gavels cannot kill it
  psychic parapets cannot
  floor it
  punning bones cannot knead it
  acreage of hooks cannot shred
  it

  #

  how can you promise
  someone a land that
  doesn’t belong
  to you?
  your legs open their door.
  a tinted window veils it:
  the
  bedspread on which
  you lie,fully spread.your
  toes mug knobs.your
  hands
  flex cards.your mind frets.
  the west federates your nest.

  #

  your point is not well taken.
  your celebration is
  antithetical to
  mine.
  i distrust your heroism.
  i curse.i bellyache.
  i belong to a
  nit-picking tide.

  knee-deep in objectifications,
  multiplying junk,
  
  half-blind,half-charmed
  glazed,slit-doored,
  you grind stones between
  chainsteps.

  #

  the black-brass trouble
  wobbles in its muddle.
  
  ancient dynastic pains
  declare their lineage.

  tonight no one is
  going
  to bestow consolation upon a mourner.
  this town is saturated in
  riots.
  adversaries dismember moonbeams.

  this is not as i would
  have you stream.

  #

  grading tales,
  comparing whips,
  we
  served,you and i,
  in a sculpted trope,
  hotly,hotly
  a pristine bureau.

  #

  one part of…
  half a part of…
  nil part
  of-

  praise the tongue
  orbiting my thigh.
  your conscientious
  tongue
  on my hair’s end.

  i’m no more the cock of the walk.

  #

  each in your high-tech jail

  to which uprising
  is your
  streetsign pointing?

  one barricade at a time.
  one stone-throw at
  a time.

  how to plant a vine
  inside a machine?

  the last thing
  you want
  is silence in the tunnel.

  #

  toxic waste
  dump
  & foamcore resister;
  solardust,grapes&gongs
  privy to the
  foamball
  of an eggtoss;light& dark
  of sugarcane& mango;
  sounds
  tropicalizing a fifth
  flowersong;cookie-cutter,paper-cutter;
  a jump
  rope’s royal bee;
  ballpoint iconizing the story of a hole;
  the hole
  story in a fuzzy portfolio.

  #

  to say nothing of a tan-line:
  
  its severe mutabilities;
  the brutal prism of a spirit possession:
  
  its vertical convulsions;
  a primalscene eyelining skulls
  a couplet
  bird-carving on a page;
  a black chalk taking a walk
  on a white board
  with
  a laughing umbrella;

  and:tortoiseshells in a foreshore.

  #

  tin-and-stucco
  iron-gated rollers
  and their bike-wheel
  jokes

  they are loyal only to housewrecking,
  to cracks in a home-run.
  
  artifex nigerianus.

  #

  to the light that flows from it,
  
  furrowing it,turning in it,
  toying with its tangle,crazing
  the
  portal,climbing it,grazing in it;

  and to you that delights in it:
  
  will you survive the fog
  that denies this arousal
  is grammatical?

  #

  not seeing the trancing landscape
  threading goatherd and
  soil
  how easily the wind
  violates my right to stillness
  being a leaf a
  leaf presently
  quailing against my will
  my mood my need my
  dispensation
  how easily i am debased
  by a cheerless careless motion
  the
  wind forces open my hand
  takes my syncopation takes my interim
  for
  harboring suspicions
  the wind subjects my provision to a
  withering blast
  i am harried
  i am badgered by the shameproof
  pursuit of a savage
  wind
  my votes my notes my half and full notes
  how casually the arrogant
  wind skews them