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Poems

The Words at My Ear

By Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto From Issue No. 7

sometimes a word slumps and dies in my ear:

graveyard for those things un-rumbling the meaning of life.

sometimes a word grows and stands in my ear:

tiny hairs like the cluster below my navel.

i have learnt the powers of gifts―

round and thick flappers of give and receive.

for every dream there is a monument

trapped somewhere in a memory.

in one of my memories,

i held my father in a bar for too long

for those years he left me without a word.

i climb up this poem for the things i know

and the things i am yet to know

and the things i will never know.

say my face is an oval moon

and children read stories under its light.

sometimes a word slumps and grows and dies and stands at my ear.

i may have learnt the powers of gifts for eloquence―

but i have to drift away from this poem into another.

About Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto More From Issue No. 7