Tipton Poetry Journal – Spring 2021 I jest a word to fool my hand shape, & a bird thieves the behaviour— half-baked, in sloped flight: a modest progress. my father knows this journey. the ruralness, taking cramps into his bowed arms. his hairless top: a circumference of split chart, meshed to a mud pie π. Isn't it strange. to own this much formula, & not solve a world problem to it's barest minimum? sometimes, the sum outdoes his bent flesh, to sheath his linear hands spacelike: an obtuse angle, pressed to series of laid lines— messed with a sharp weight. till his reflex picks it: a mud pie, & alternates. & he resumes his Hindu sport on a docile kin, inciting a degree of hatred. his hands, trying the lengths it could go to spoon our luck. I've known this daycare, twenty-one years in a stretch. in a home of small latitude. in my algebra peep through blocks where they forge this maths, to amaze us with some much route, springing a mutual answer.
Nnadi Samuel is a black writer & graduate of English & literature from the University of Benin in Nigeria. His works have been previously published in Suburban Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, Blood Orange Review, The Cordite Poetry Review, Gordon Square Review, Canyon Voices, Journal Nine & elsewhere. Winner of the Canadian Open Drawer contest 2020, Splendor of Dawn Poetry Contest April 2020, and the Bkpw Poetry Workshop Contest 2021. He was shortlisted in the annual Poet's Choice award & was the second-prize winner of the EOPP 2019 contest. A longlist of the NSPP 2020 prize, & Pushcart Nominee. He is the author of Reopening of Wounds & Subject Lessons (forthcoming). He reads for U-Right Magazine. He tweets @Samuelsamba10.
55
