All posts tagged: poem

Eyes At Half-Mast

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“Professor Okong stared on the tabletop with lowered eyes; like eyes at half- mast.” ~ Anthills of the Savannah, Chinua Achebe With his weary rising the purpose has almost been completed  Eyes at half-mast and salt and pepper strands  bear witness and testify to the being that will soon seep from a clay vessel soon pass into the void of the night  Milky eyes have begun to reflect a shroud  that no one else sees the stomach subserviently takes  the shape of a swollen gourd  and all the while the soul has been planted  roots as sturdy as ripened cassava  and heaves with the yellow fruit  of twenty thousand fervent prayers   from the last third of darkness Later this library will decompose and leave the sweet fragrance of a strange memory and an even stranger heart Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu is a poet and writer based in London. She is author of the chapbook “All The Birds Were Invited To A Feast In The Sky” and has been featured in the publication The Drinking Gourd.

A Colony of Ants

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the avenues of loss don’t get any fewer this side of living. to the pilgrims who cling to the rope by one halal haribo. when in childhood wonder we learned to multiply and divide we didn’t account for those exponential paths to a seventy year hollowing or that one indivisible road less travelled. to the promised land. to the seekers who collapse with the weight of revelation until the banks of beating hearts and tired translucent skin stretches to accommodate the latest transgression’s emotions. for those this side of living. perhaps the honey of a magnanimous word will be harvested where the grass is most definitely greener. perhaps a colony of ants pour to devour the sweetness that will pile in your hands. here’s for hoping for a blessed sleep. because barely does the eye adjust to tentative light only to be swallowed by darkness again. here’s to praying and wishing. here’s to us, the class of this millennium somehow surviving three darknesses, somehow becoming the clay niche where the sun sets. Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu is a …