For Nights that Bag My Worries & Loss into A 100Kg Hunch on My Chest”
by Nwuguru Chidiebere
In my room tonight/ I’m a verse in Billie Eilish’s song/ too cool
to warm up a soul pecking snowstorms/ This is to say
that I’m to myself/ an ad before or in between a YouTube video/
a thick consonant cluster clogging the throat of/ a stammerer/
At night like this/ I round off my odds into even litanies/ the kind
that primes itself/ as a special number before God/ Sometimes
I swell up into a pot-bellied cloud/ & eclipse the only bright bulb
in my room: a roll call for gloom/ darkness is a cold room for the
perishable secrets in my heart/ & my head is a place of exile
for the failures that thunder me/ into the cordial arms of depression/
My eyes bleach the truth/ & shy away from the fact that I hawk
my crafts/ by the roadside of the world/ & piggyback my dreams
as a writer through a higgledy-piggledy means/ a means without
a laptop or a cell phone/ I borrowed my way into the eyes of
the public/ but you know the jamming tone of adieu/ sounds
so much like the name of a babysitter/ whose baby ferries into
a hip of dust in a distant town/
to warm up a soul pecking snowstorms/ This is to say
that I’m to myself/ an ad before or in between a YouTube video/
a thick consonant cluster clogging the throat of/ a stammerer/
At night like this/ I round off my odds into even litanies/ the kind
that primes itself/ as a special number before God/ Sometimes
I swell up into a pot-bellied cloud/ & eclipse the only bright bulb
in my room: a roll call for gloom/ darkness is a cold room for the
perishable secrets in my heart/ & my head is a place of exile
for the failures that thunder me/ into the cordial arms of depression/
My eyes bleach the truth/ & shy away from the fact that I hawk
my crafts/ by the roadside of the world/ & piggyback my dreams
as a writer through a higgledy-piggledy means/ a means without
a laptop or a cell phone/ I borrowed my way into the eyes of
the public/ but you know the jamming tone of adieu/ sounds
so much like the name of a babysitter/ whose baby ferries into
a hip of dust in a distant town/
Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan is a keen writer from Ebonyi State, Nigeria. He is a final year Medical Laboratory Science student and a Forward Prize nominee who makes poems from everything he can't stammer through speeches. He has works published or forthcoming at Shore Poetry, Journal Nine, Inverse Journal, Rabid Oak, The Lake, IS&T, Disquiet Art, Dreich Mag, B'K Mag and several other places. He can be reached out on Facebook @Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan, on Twitter @wordpottersull1