Death gathers hips of bone to beat rioting nights
into a coma & this was euthanasia granted to
a wounded crow begging for a curse so clean,
it leaves no trace. To seal this order, ghosts walk
into poems to crown our skeleton a graveyard
wet with algae. While everyone watched,
I walked out of the cellar with no sound; such
breathtaking silence deserves an audience.
When vampires thunder the world with bloody
mouths, I’m on your side making watery deathbeds
from the crackles of the scorched. Look. Nails
whittling into flowers. I’m known to carve boats
out of coffins that take us back to the place where
we belong. As we sail homewards, nailing our paths
into the quietness of the sea, the tides demand that we
row our boats with femurs gathered from bloodless wars.
but how do we dance in sleeping bodies without waking
crows or move through the cemetery like a season
stunned with plague, leaving no trace? I let the spade
carry out its duty of covering the pungent whiffs of spirits.
Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan (he/him/his) is a keen writer of Izzi, Abakaliki ancestry; a Medical Laboratory Science student whose works have been nominated for The Forward Prize, Pushcart Prize, and Best of The Net Award. He was the winner of 2021, WAN–Cookout Journal Poetry Prize. He has works published or forthcoming at Sand Journal, The Shore Poetry, Augur Mag, Susquehanna Review, and elsewhere. He is fond of his poorly lit room from where he tweets @wordpottersull1.
