3

Thanksgiving

I

A sudden abyss in a sealed silence

Howl between a familiar two.

For how long will they stare

Statue-like at plastic chasms?

A lone word

In whispers is a bridge…

II

Diamond eyes

In a blacked out night

Showering floodlights

Of smiles…

III

Ndidi !

Twin longings

Reinvent tongues

In musk of translations

With patience, your name…

IV

We shall return to share the laughter

In the sunny radiance after the showers

And relive soothing memories

Where electric eyes don’t threaten…

V

In flighty departures greedy for new spaces

The quickened pulse snatched our tryst from song.

The snail-meat, the smoked-fish,

The exuberant Ogbono, the flattened MT EBA-

Pampered the gut of this rabid traveller.

I remember the after-dinner itch

Woken to the gift of you through

The cannibal districts of Rumuigbo

I remember my lips licking my lips

I remember the glad furies of the Garden-city Guinness

I remember the after-dinner itch

Judith, the nervous soup of the first supper

Rouses the distant thanksgiving

I suffer the after-dinner itch.

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SENTINEL POETRY #29, Online Magazine Monthly, April 2005, ISSN 1479-425X