Lifestyle
How wicked a space is to a body is notable in the way
a bird puts a stop to its song of hope, while I am still
drawing strength from its lyrics, while in the wood.
I have been here on most days of my life, a place I share
with lonely little things. There is an earthworm burrowing
into the earth and I am reminded how grief screws into my body.
In another interpretation, I am searching for a space to call home.
The earth is not running perhaps because it has no home elsewhere.
Tell me where is large enough to welcome its vastness, its history
of motherhood, the forlorn creatures hidden beneath its wings?
In the way it orbits the sun, I think it pleases the earth to relocate.
Little me welcomes little things. Isn’t this the way of life:
the pelting of plagues like algae against a wall? Grinding
is constant in my life in which my worries are spices of grief.
And I keep running away from what swears to be dead inside of me.
Tell me what culture is greater than this. In the cloudburst
that swept the world into the sea, the wick still burns in me.
Contributor’s Bio
Blessing Omeiza Ojo chairs Hill-Top Creative Arts Foundation, Abuja. He has received nominations for Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize, Creators of Justice Award, Castello di Duino International Poetry and Theatre Competition, Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest, and the Korea-Nigeria Poetry Prize. He is a contributor to literary journals with poetry surfacing in The Last Girls Club, the Deadlands, Cọ́n-scìò, Split Lip, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing in schools within Abuja, Nigeria.
You can reach him via email: [email protected]
