For our bounty…
“Wake up to reality,
nothing goes as planned in this accursed world”— Madara
Is it religious for a prayer mat to welcome a man
who is saturated with his own chlorinated tears?
There are many ways to strip a body
and carve it, a door, for anything but sweetness.
My eyes have eaten too much bitterness,
it can no longer filter hollow from hope.
I said to my wife that on the resurrection sunday
we would slow dance with turkey swimming in our throats,
with our children wielding their forks over the last sausage
as their smiles chew the sun, with God burning love
until it finds its way into our nostrils. Tsk tsk tsk,
doesn’t reality rewrite our dreams with an aim of capitalizing
horror? There were days my wife’s phobia for knives
had us dice onions with our own teeth.
But today, fear dies at her feet as she dislodges
a matchet from her dissection kit.
I sourly chuckle at reality’s way of arranging metaphors;
how my sinless wife morphed into a killer, beats me;
how my son, cut for dinner, is another metaphor
that leaves my jaw on fine dust.
The kitchen smells like a hunter soaked
in a litter of his prey’s blood.
God won’t let death visit twice, so we feed on him tonight,
she whispers.
Was there an option?
I dare to reply; for we either let hunger pipe out our lives
or turn our children’s body to grilled turkey.
Hunger is madness, and my spouse plays the victim.
I peep into the soul of a woman reshaped by fate; the curves
my hands once fondled like a trophy
are now bones bonded by an economized skin.
Reality says,
you would first eat your humanity before god sends a lamb…
For our bounty
ABOUT THE POET
Pacella Chukwuma- Eke, NGP Xv, is a Nigerian poet and short story writer. She is the winner of the Cradle poetry contest, Abuja Duet Slam, Splendors of Dawn Poetry Prize, two-time finalist for the BKPW contest, and Joint winner of the FOW Poetry Contest. She is currently studying Human Physiology in Uli, a foreign town in Eastern Nigeria. She wishes that her poetry can somehow, be a mirror where people see through others without judging. When she is not writing or studying, Pacella can be found touring in her bathroom; imposing as Billie Ellish, Mariah Carey; writing new songs, or perhaps, gossiping with Safari about the latest horror movie. She is the author of Love in its bliss and sins; runner up of the 2022 Nigeria Prize for Teen Authors(Poetry.) Her works have appeared or are forthcoming on Eunoia magazine, Strange Horizons, The Brittle paper, and elsewhere. She is a member of The HillTop Creative Arts Foundation, tweets @dancing_poet, and can be found on Ig @pacellachukwumaeke.
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