I took water
from your lapping sea of origins
and worked you into seashells
into my mind
into my arts…
I drew you in the face of glassy waters,
left you sated in
the holy unity of bodies.
from a single tweet, a single wink
you came to me in body like a poem
and I took all of you
you took all of me in rapacious hunger of muse
overpowered by fluvial writ of summons.
A fit of soft subliminal rage
made Ọ̀rúnmìlà bearer and breaker
of our calabash
Apollo the carrier of songs
of moans into pitch-white nights
into twelfth clouds.
You came to be water in my soul
as Ani made the mat
for our snappy dance
in the wee hour of gods
where Asiama and Atakpo
forged the watery songs in our heads…
Now, I tattoo you with songs
you inhale my heat
my lines dot you about
make poetry with your flesh
blood and bones.
This is a miracle of waters
between the crossroads
of bodies and dreams,
we become reborn.
Ndubuisi Martins is a Nigerian poet, poetry theorist, and critic. He is the author of one gazelle and two collections of poetry, including Answers through the Bramble, longlisted for the 2022 Pan African Writers Association’s (PAWA) Prize for Poetry (English Category). He is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Charles University, Prague, Czechia. Ndubuisi’s poems have been published in African American Review, Lunaris Review, Ngiga Review, African Writer, Sorosoke Anthology, and elsewhere. With the notable Nigerian poet, Remi Raji, Ndubuisi edited Twenty-Two Voices for WPD 2022 (An E-Chapbook, Noirledge Limited). Literary scholar Ndubuisi is co-editor of Critical Perspectives on Nduka Otiono. He currently serves on the Advisory board of The Protagonist, a postgraduate literary journal of literary criticism at Charles University. Ndubuisi is also a reviewer for a couple of academic journals.
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