Today’s choice
Previous poems
Samuel A. Adeyemi
Without Blood
I used to think that suffering,
although injurious, makes a good story.
You know how it goes. The more tortured
the artist, the closer the body is to brilliance.
I still do not know if this is a myth.
But mostly, I do not care now.
I still have my horns, but I am marvelous
even without them. The truth is,
something has changed.
All I want is to live a life without blood.
The holster, unstrapped from my shoulder,
calloused by the constance of war.
I am no longer that wounded fawn,
rummaging through the bushes for rest.
The arrows of my anguish still chase,
but something must be done
about my torturous fate.
I cannot watch the light of my eyes
give in to the call of the grave.
I can already hear the chorus of my tribe.
They want the ancient blade,
the guillotine that hovered
above my head like a halo of death.
They like me better ruined.
Bruised-eyed boy. Man of many miseries.
They’d let me drown in a well
if it made the water sweet.
As if we need persecution to be pretty.
As if the body’s quest is not fulfilled
if it hasn’t been cut.
I must not burn to be beautiful.
Only those ready for death should live
through fire. The clay, hardened,
is prepared for permanence, but also
to break. Each season, I am searching
for newness, sculpting my bones
for an unfamiliar weather.
I do not pray, but I pray for mercy.
I do not worship, but the only song
scrabbling through my mouth
yearns for softness.
Let me be moldable. Let me bend
at the touch of what seeks my breath.
Samuel A. Adeyemi‘s chapbook, Rose Ash, was selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the New-Generation African Poets chapbook box set, 2023. A Best of the Net Nominee and Pushcart Nominee, he is the winner of the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize 2021. His works have appeared in Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, Chestnut Review, Evergreen Review, Agbowo, Isele Magazine, Lolwe, and elsewhere.
Ma Yongbo 马永波 and Helen Pletts on World Poetry Day
When you enter mountains, afternoons stretch
and lengthen like days; mesmerise.
下午进山的人都会多活上一天
他们从这山望着更高的山
搓着通红的大手望山气变化
Bel Wallace
Trespasses Forgive me The E flat on your baby grand (not quite in tune). This same finger in the crack that goes clean through the bungalow’s supporting wall. Then flicking dust from the fringed edge of your floral lampshade. Noticing that they...
Arlette Manasseh
You were the pine, softening the dirt I grew up in: the one I climbed in the breeze. Wanting to describe you, I had called you Paulie. That is not your name.
Lynn Valentine
A Bad Spell
The rowan by the house is cracked in two,
her bark ragged, grown good-for-nothing old.
Matt Nicholson
Cousin
I didn’t know who the call was about,
just that it was past my proper bedtime
Karen Hodgson Pryce
All at sea on a serenity of sheep,
we played monopoly, box tatty and frail.
Its missing chance cards, no get-out-of-jail.
Nicole Knoppová
Mami, I find myself wishing your memory
were a bird of prey—
red-tailed hawk or black vulture . . .
Ali Murphy
One Winter’s Line
Between underpants and saggy bra,
she hangs her fallopian tubes out to dry.
Harry Gunston
night knocks inside my dream
at the end of the world
death house
where sawdust covers everything.