The Sharp Weight of Inheritance

antonevmeshkin

NNADI SAMUEL

“I do not know if hurt is my birthright” — Jason B. Crawford

knuckle withholds an English suffering, clenched in fierce strain. my unsheathed hands, hurled spacelike, knifing a worship.

there are times my loin becomes a violation of religion: object to be cast out. times agony was in vogue— how we put ourselves to torture.

here, my rib aligns to a wounded score arrowed by grace, like endnotes. gravity lifts anguish towards the mouth. a prayer undone.

teeth tightening a default sorrow, gnashed in the way a plectrum to my vein spew blues, when honed afresh. we run out of anguish & grief, fisting a rhythm out of wrath. I untuck my palm, rummaging for a tender torture, an ache sufficient to match my hardship. still, my loin hymns an awful song. my rib, strung into a French harp.

accident seems the rawest kind of harmony: weight— injured into hemorrhage.

‘I long to be damaged way out of the ordinary.’ look how we phrase a casualty shuttling in between violence & voice.

the ghastly lyric: a killer tune. rough decibel smashed onto our jawline. the neat chaos, outsending after-susurrations. a wounded melody.

no one born of reed should suffer this long, fisting a rhythm out of wrath.

Nnadi Samuel (he/him/his) holds a B.A. in English & literature from the University of Benin. His works have been previously published/forthcoming in Suburban Review, Seventh Wave Magazine, NativeSkin lit Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, FIYAH, Fantasy Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, The Capilano Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Gutter Magazine, Carte Blanche, Trampset, Beestung Magazine, The Elephant Magazine & elsewhere. Winner of the Miracle Monocle Award for Ambitious Student Writers 2021(University of Louisville), Lakefly Poetry Contest 2021 (Wisconsin), the International Human Right Arts Festival Award 2021, and Canadian Open Drawer contest 2020. He got an honorable mention for the 2021 Betty L. Yu and Jin C.Yu Creative Writing Prize(College Category). He is the author of “Reopening of Wounds” & “Subject Lessons” (forthcoming). He reads for U-Right Magazine. He tweets @Samuelsamba10.

When I say “I long to be Damaged” I mean, way out of the Ordinary

NNADI SAMUEL

I command this body to lose luster, for me to be tainted with wrath. punishment that I am— dismantling empathy in vows, to harbor a lesser pain. answerable to only the pleasure of my aching.

I am boundless with dark grief. you’d know how my woe torches, how my sorrow laps flame:

a reddish resistance towards whatever twirls supplication into sore throat, dragging my mutant breath, till my ducts are slacked.

I bear my deadliest darkness like a reliquary. a bright agony knives my collarbone. in your spare time, say a prayer for this ruin, this relic, this rare accident of mud & breath, knocked down by the craze of living.

I too own my wound in the elegance of a long stain. here, the stretchmark. here, the hurt shaped into a ligature— the way ache cling onto the body, the body onto ache.

I tarnish my skin to mold blisters. if this cost me damage, I consent to the torment that is my upbringing.

I’ve guarded this suffering my whole life. this body shouldn’t be a yardstick for misfortune.

won’t you pardon me, if I say I lack the fire to lamp my way through the next minute?

cassettebleue

cassettebleue

The Business of Dialects

NNADI SAMUEL

The way my tongue believes in this silence scrapes blue for the sky to pitch with colours. stars brittle in rust, I loved my stature to one fattening near.

I lost my taste to the pain of dialects, & warm my voice like faint gratitude on the lips of clime.

a sigh brews me close to my father. first time to see my old man choke in his tea, & spill it’s crumbs like endnotes on a wild magazine of milk.

our roof shrinks with last shots of rain, & the war lures me to sleep.

in my dreams, I made shrapnels with the chumbled snow. I lay on my belly to soak the bite & tongue distance— the length of my father’s feet.

I catch my breath in the middle of a shell, where silence steals the echoes from me.

I reek of sibilants, the tone of my father. softness made of rustles, to weave sullen deprived words. I chirp the sediments on my lips to know the business of dialects, & trade them on my skin like a lost groove. I am pressed to this rhythm, this song that shreds me to bed.

from the note, I sustain a shrill. to halt is to hurt my father’s dream. I stir a distance, to rob me of my siblings.

in the blank, I pride my father’s vision. I sting my son, & ditch my tongue into a boiled trap to have all the bites in different folds.

antivenoms shouldn’t rub us off this bliss, this dialect seared to our tongues like brimstones. our race lay close to their legs, & make sprinting this way.

we are silent with our breaths, yet our trackwalk read miles.

giorgiorossi73

Oral Prosthetics for Mouthing a Requiem

NNADI SAMUEL

In lieu of a detailed backwash & camo flatulence, the scout cork their cheeks. tongue, unfurled as cartridge spilling bullet notes. a gruesome battalion, summoned to shoulder guns as refrain.

war is old testament. so I weave my lung into a fervent Lamentation, gaslight it to chorus its own dirge in high pitch:

a ricochet blent in some tonic sol-fa, ranked in the hierarchy of G major. our lieutenant lips— a seizured vibrato. their acoustic positioning, aimless as a scattergun.

and we’re paid this way: to bruise our tongue on soft palate, with native remorse nudging our cheeks— phoneme gassed to birth a pregnant surge that sits on G clef to mourn our dead lots.

the colonial feel of it, taking chains through our brave gums. it doesn’t stop the escape of breeze slithering from the caves of our mouth, whitewashed with a dental sponge. I hush & I’m neat for a soldier. I love my puff of air. I love my chest to heave the new mantra at break-time, & crash like some software.

I’m always forgetful with mid stanzas. their ejectives, pushing me to mess the next syllable on jawline, & name it a velar plus— to boast our morale, shred the norm

holding them in the most vulnerable way, wet ripe for fresh orders. my hand thunderstruck into a salute.

you become part of the military by being parcel of the time bomb that climaxes your labial region. duct, drenched in E-flat.

to obey a clarion call is to answer to a certain breathlessness. in no distant time, mics will be added to our badge.

elzeva

Surrender

NNADI SAMUEL

“We go where there is love, to the river. I pull her under four times, until we are rivered” — Natalie Diaz

surrender— yet another verb I do not partake in. & when I do my grief sets with the sun; waning in bronze delight. praise happiness for its gift of colours.

here, we quit on rhythm. here, I resign to memorizing your walk pace. how you roam. legs sashaying for lyrics: a blood-soft orison.

and on christianing the wound, I praise my tough loin— deathless to life’s quick blow. praise all the ways I taught it to rot, how to wear away. To think I spent a lifetime, rehearsing what death looks like across border.

perhaps, happiness is fashionable. perhaps, it is ‘joy going their third round on our black skin: the last lap, knowing us through a fluent migration.

post colonial, we landlock the nearby sea. fold our skin into boats like origamis: a tortuous art. what’s there to quit, when we’re right here, afloat & wind vulnerable to storm-dialect in tepid and furious language.

my immigrant voice, still relying on note books to orate forth sentences & mid salutations. the ‘goodevrin’ ‘goodevrin’, ragged everywhere across my catchphrase.

Etymology of Tap Dance as a Manual for Break-ups

NNADI SAMUEL

Say I come to a halt, understand I’m deity-bound to this nagging sound rooting for my calmness. whatever her loud threats are, understand I ain’t stopping.

I begin this derby with dust, with the thickness of hoofs wounding the atmosphere: my riot drunk steps. I shouldn’t be the harbinger of this roaming havoc

dear lord. if we must be tethered, it must be now. the high and low octaves, spanning eight degrees round my ghetto waist.

I double over with loss, reward my indecency with each track manipulated by God’s roving hands. my choreographer thinks: no one ever lazarused a dance step till zeal makes the Jesus-move.

Oh! how passion suffers us, when it can’t place us in demand. there’s bound to be something about flexibility that hijacks grief, dodges dinner, could slack in a second & that’s it: a fleeting prowess.

the ache longs to know me badly, and I bare out my ruptured nerves to it. what way to explain the imbalance of want.

& allow pain consume the bloody lecture gushing from me: a homework of bones, wound-fascinated in giving hurt quite the shit show.

I’m enslaved to whoever steals the breath from my lungs on hearing her walk steps. a bursting sugar-rush. my sweetheart, knifing the diabetes from afar.

we die whatever bonds us together, trash our love deals on the floor— like expired contracts.

I am not one to exaggerate a crime scene. but for now, I barely trust this dagger of a wife.