Waking, Or Knife-cuts like Questions on my Left Wrist
“I wake up and on the other side of the bed
is a name that claims me. I cannot
conjure what I was before that moment: rays
slicing through the wood door are knife cuts like
the questions on my left wrist. What is a man?
I contemplate for a moment, but a moment is also
a lifetime, and I am on my deathbed.
I turn and throw a final greeting at the name
that claims me: What is a man?”
Breaking a Fall
sitting on a branch in company of dusk,
a soul opens heavenwards
shares secrets only his thought
and the air can hear
a mild breeze responds
speaking the tongue of leaves
it says—
this oracle speaking in the tongue of leaves—
nothing is
the soul concurs
jumps off the branch
a kind noose stretches
to catch him around the neck . . .
for humans who are scars
when they finally
find our names
hanging
from the sun
remind them
how our tongue
was fire
how that fire
hissed god
how god
was a war
we could never survive
tell them
survival was an abyss we fell into
tell them
we could never
stop falling. . .
About the Author:
D. E. Benson’s review has appeared on Brittle Paper. A student at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, he was Custodian of The Writers’ Community (TWC) in the university and the organizer of Poetry Friday UNN, a poetry and spoken word event. He was Poetry Editor of the university literary journal, The Muse.
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