2 Poems | Nweke Bernard Okechukwu

Extra Preamble to End Time

soon, i will be falling off the edge of the
universe without you knowing.
the way i’m not aware the month is ending
& there’s no wine, no candy
or palatable porridge icy in the refrigerator —
something warm to wrap
hands around & call mine. outside, the
magpies sing & dance on the
flowers. the dogs wagging their tails near my
feet, but they will miss me,
& lose me to someone they will still lose
to someone they will still lose.
not me choking the air out of my nostrils, but
time is tired of returning to
the monopoly of the rise & fall of the sun.
yet insatiability hikes like
mountains. inform the doctor in vain he
acupunctures my diverticulum or how many cans of amphetamine stops rupturing?
as i drop the work, the stress,
the pains & everything here comes ending
except those to soil their buttocks
from the long bench to the dust with elegy.

Chaotic Gymnasium

the morning after the bus plunged into the
river, 32 made it to the water base, bus-wrecked. & we took threnody to the shoreline.
at least to remind waters that a madman
shares with the household when his dead
body decomposes near the pavement.
32 teeth i have bear the victims of the wreck,
each, & somewhere, a man tattoos the wall lines & names them 32 polyphyletic sons of
bloody waters. that’s how adults draw the
dead to their breastbones. to know this,
put crickets in a brimmed basin—an experi-
ment of chaos. only then you know tragedy
has less euphemism. only then you know
at the lurking of tragedy, everyone becomes
selfish, reckless & helpless. because right now,
a mother battles to save her bones leaving
her child backed down the chasm in the water
floor. i empty tears here not on the waters
because even this river mourns reddish than
our eyes can carry. such displeasure
differentiating S from D: which by these
conflicting initials;
s—wimming—a brief excursion until your
mother calls home, &
d—rowning—a chaotic gymnasium at the
the ruthlessness of waters.

Nweke Benard Okechukwu is a Nigerian poet. A Mass Communication student at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka in Anambra State. His works have appeared/are forthcoming in Mudroom, muse mag., West Trade Review, Epoch, Isele, nnd, & elsewhere. He can be reached on Twitter & Instagram at @romeobenokechukwu.