NNADI SAMUEL

Weeping Sestina

Our loin is a hit track named death/or thanksgiving: a cassette that ushers yet another bone-clean song. a single hit offsprings a negro with a wife in diaspora. a single hit sends a cold war asleep. a single hit throws itself at a theorem—to prove: the body is God's brightest puzzle. each pulsing heart, relearning the cooked beat of its throbbing. azure breath, staining a lyric into white noise. here, women memorizes their bodies.

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& I forget yours: legible mold of flesh. 

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the ill-fitting scar and how you nurture the suffering so well— I dig past bone to sort your flaws. I'm branding my loin a raw fetish: smokescreen of grievance. a maddened tavern, housing a drunk 

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of seraphs. say— errand-ghosts fancies alcohol. rum, messing their breath. 

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garment, scorched by whiskey, as the burn licks the sadness. there's grieving in how we self-destruct. & my life is unwanted sonnet— panting through all fourteen holes in my midriff. I'm blessed with trauma. my priciest possession— your weeping & wound & early sadness.

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I acknowledge each first bleed. each rum. each errand ghost, yelling at full moon.