CHINUA EZENWA-OHAETO
And how the death of anything is first being born.
My sister taught me that everything around us is yet inside of us.
One afternoon, I held the sun leaks in my palms and swallowed half of my reflection.
Forgive me if I’m not telling this story right.
I must say that the things we struggle to forget often find their way into our dreams.
Say a lover is a man who has two paramours and still love them equally?
Do you call a woman by the squared-window a portrait?
The day my father left, my mother traced him on my face right up to the place they met.
For some time, thereafter, I thought I was my father.
And learned how he walked and said certain things.
This is not grief. Or resentment either.
I felt my father in my dreams.
And learned how he said certain things and walked.
For some time, thereafter, I thought I was my father.
The day he left, my mother traced him on my face right up to the place they met.
Do you call a man by the squared-window a portrait?
Say a lover is a woman who has two paramours and still love them equally?
I must say that the things we struggle to forget often find their way into our dreams.
Forgive me if I’m not telling this story right.
One afternoon, I held the sun’s leaks in my palm and swallowed half of my reflection.
My sister taught me that everything around us is yet inside of us.
And how the death of anything is first being born.
I wrote on the blackboard about the moon halved by the arms of God.
CHINUA EZENWA-OHAETO
(@ChinuaEzenwa) is from Owerri-Nkworji in Nkwerre, Imo state, Nigeria and grew up between Germany and Nigeria. He is always grateful to the poets who influence him. He has won the Association of Nigerian Author’s Literary Award for Mazariyya Ana Teen Poetry Prize, 2009; Speak to the Heart Inc. Poetry Competition, 2016. He became a runner-up in the Etisalat Prize for Literature, Flash fiction, 2014. He won the Castello di Duino Poesia Prize for an unpublished poem, 2018 which took him to Italy. He was the recipient of New Hampshire Institute of Art’s 2018 Writing Award, and also the recipient of New Hampshire Institute of Art’s 2018 scholarship to MFA Program. In 2019, he was the winner of the Sevhage/Angus Poetry Prize and second runner-up in the 5th Singapore Poetry Contest. His works have appeared in Lunaris Review, AFREADA, Poet Lore, Rush Magazine, Frontier, Palette, Malahat Review, Southword Magazine, Vallum, Mud Season Review, Bakwa Magazine, Salamander, Strange Horizons, One, Ake Review, Crannòg, and elsewhere.
