Nnadi Samuel

Two Poems
by Nnadi Samuel

Nature knows a little about Slave Trade

Trowling gypsum on detached bricks against deadlines,

Pa’s sandbathed yell finds me leaping across fence to where the sound catches.

 

until now, it takes no cement cheek of his,

kidney stone and saliva to blare my concrete noun:

a rowdy belch of alphabet plastering his pewed gums

like mouth slaves dodging the bleeding rule to consonant cluster.

 

each row, giving a soothing round of a tongue on soaked fonts.

the ache stretches, as wound glorifies an hour.

 

atop the scaffold, all muscle flex from him commands a harsh paste.

they grieve. it’s obvious, on my jaded lip,

the howness of skin, they filter through pores: bright napalms.

 

at final touch, Pa lamps his way toward a small stream to rid them off his lush beards.

the coarseness of it, vulgar then neon.

 

the next hour speaks us into distant contract

as dusk came, repatching every leakage of light.

such thoughtful blindness fat-fingering nocturne on our shadows.

 

memories haunt the glassless frame.

I peer at it long enough to sculpt Pa toweling the piled bricks.

each whack, a violence rummaging where beauty would later touch.

the not enough-ness of dust, surrounding us like cruel jinns.

we sort our residence from the blind alley — ankle-red and intimate with cramp,

as neon sky leaks raw portions of light.

 

Pa deadens the last bit of civilization from his walkie-talkie,

& twiced his walk steps.

the motioned calm, swaying the grasses.

 

a decorum next to slavery —

It demands your negro hands.

 

---

There is a Gnawing need for Sugar

cane. & across states, lanky bodies with collar bone — the shape

of a knife, peel fabrics of white in the open space

& a terrible sweetness abound.

 

their colleague, knifing the diabetes from afar.

 

passengers, the embittered gas attendant wielding a nozzle

& therapist whose mental health is in jeopardy in this country,

clings tightly to iréke, teething careful in honeyed places.

the jawbreaking attempts, met by a vanishing of healthy stalk.

 

there’s a wild approach to anything here that holds juicy detail:

the fuel tanker going headlong into every teenager.

hands, upshot high as a ready kalashnikov — gunning for crimson sky.

 

the restless shard of a young lad unsettling the whirlwind,

 

& for the time being, I wish each legible stalk takes the form of language.

each brandished nozzle — a verb to-be. each upshot hand,

paraphrasing the atmosphere.

 

the wound on each knifing merchant, scrawled in past perfect tense.

their lanky bodies — a movable gerund,

with collar bones — the shape of a plea.

may God oblige this stunning request.

 

reckon, I too pray amiss.

I’ve once questioned the smallest of sweetness in life,

once petitioned heaven on account of candy floss.

 

the easiest sadness is a boy.

 

of all prayer points God, grant us a unifying language.

(Editor’s note: iréke means ‘sugarcane’ in the Yoruba dialect.)

 

Nnadi Samuel holds a B.A. in English & Literature from the University of Benin in Nigeria. In 2021, he won the Miracle Monocle Award for Ambitious Student Writers, from the University of Louisville. He is author of Reopening of Wounds, and the forthcoming Subject Lessons.

His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Capilano Review, The Elephant Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, FIYAH, The Seventh Wave, and The Suburban Review, among other literary and art journals. He resides in Lagos, Nigeria.

Click for our interview with Nnadi Samuel.

We encourage you to follow Nnadi Samuel on Twitter @SamuelSamba10 and on Facebook. For his most recent book of poetry — Reopening of Wounds — click here.