I do not remember the songs.
But the voices were harps &
violins. There was violence,
darkness, I kept running. The
breast bone halts the bullet
aimed at the thorax. The
bullet hole like a vein drains life
out of the body. I do not remember
who was mourned. But, I wept.
In a news headline, a boy scrapes
the remains of his mother
for cloning. In another room,
all my fears shine like a chandelier
above my head. All I remember
is the expanse of my shadow &
that little area where it does not
cover. The physics of solitude
is space & want & ache & longing.
A pilgrim seeks acceptance, the way a gun
seeks a voice. I welcome grief
into the village of my body.
In my blood, there’s food & water
& two large rooms,
in my head & in my heart. I kept
running. That was what you had to
do to become the voice instead
of the elegy. During the war, I let
darkness seep through my mouth.
I do not remember the songs,
again. At the war front, I vultured
on the dead bodies, digested the
grief into memories. But here I am,
malnourished, starved of my own
reminiscence. The clearer picture:
I lost my grief to the loss of
memory. I lost loss
to loss. I do not remember dancing
with a girl the night I first got drunk
in the bar. I know the man who
once handed me my grandpa’s
snuffbox & said: this is what war has left of him
All my life, I have been searching for the key
instead of the door. & what hurts
is when you realize that what you call
home is a way home. My
fears are the moon of my night.
I can remember the cry of a baby boy
who was named after war, Agha. I
remember Moju powder scattered
all over his face like an unskilled piece
of painting. Crunchy squares of cabin
biscuits between our jaws crushing
into ruins. A girl’s lips inside mine
at a corner of the house, when no one
was watching. I do not remember
my house in Lagos. I used to jump
over fences & never got caught. I
kept running. I do not remember the
songs. Neither the voices nor my face
in the old family photo album. This
I remember, in the middle of the war,
I tossed my face into rainwater to
discolor the bloodstains in the white
of my eyes. And when I arose the war
was already over. & I heard the songs
echoing in my ear drum. The birds
sang them every morning.
GOSPEL CHINEDU is a Nigerian poet from the Igbo descent. He currently is an undergraduate at the College Of Health Sciences, Okofia where he studies Anatomy. He loves music and is a big fan of Isak Danielson. His poems are mostly speculative and cuts across different themes. He is a 2021 Starlit Award Winner, Runner Up for the Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize 2023, the Blurred Genre Contest (Invisible City Lit), 2023, Honorable Mention in the Stephen A. Dibiase Poetry Prize, 2023 and also a finalist in the Dan Veach prize for younger poets, 2023. His works of poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Chestnut Review, Worcester Review, Augur Magazine, Fantasy, Fiyah, The Deadlands, Channel, Apparition Lit, Mud Season Review, Trampset, The Drift, Consequence Forum, The Rialto, BathMagg and other places. Gospel tweets @gonspoetry.
