NEWLY BORN

 

After a million spirits shake us up from sleep

with tales and songs of peace and goodwill

we flee the bed

ignoring the biting cold

and track the lone star that lights up the world

 

Diviners

fluent in the tongues of omens

had foretold the incarnation

that would strip our tattered sloughs

and wash us to gleam like gold

 

To ponder this offer of New Life

for which we’re both entreated and coerced

we pause by the entrance of the manger

wishing we had brought some chalk or kola

for the newly born cackling and kicking

 

NEW-YEAR’S EVE

 

All evening

we siege the Old World

armed to the teeth

with the latest firecrackers

awaiting the order at midnight

to invade the city

as with the roars of heavy shelling

and the cackles of light machine gun

to hoist the New Calendar

while believers keep watch in temples

singing

praying

wailing

and shedding their tattered sloughs

 Biography:

 Uchenna Ekweremadu is a Kaduna-based writer. He was long listed for the Erbacce Prize for Poetry, 2015 and 2016. He was the first runner-up for PEN Nigeria/Saraba Magazine Poetry Prize, 2011, and was published in the Book of Winners, Castello di Duino International Poetry Competition, 2010. Apart from poetry, he also experiments with play and prose. Some of his works have appeared in Grub Street, Imitation Fruit Journal, Coe Review, The Write Room, Saraba Magazine, Wilderness House Literary, A&U American AIDS Magazine, Kalahari Review, Flashquake and elsewhere. He is the Subeditor of Wawa Book Review.