Crevice Letter
Done plowing the fields,
the ravenous farmers doffed a cadaver
from the low branches
of a tree outlining the sky.
Their faces left no traces
of wide mouths and widest eyes;
yet, they slowly veered around their heads,
cutlassing the air
with imagined thoughts.
The low gradient of sunlight, through the gaps
of thick leafage of trees, dappled
the forest floor in uneven streaks of pearly lights,
telling of the descending sun.
The letter in the crevice
flicked like a star.
Its angle—a part of the edge.
On a spring tree, a squirrel would unnerve
the farmers with cutlass and hoes
draped over slack shoulder blades.
A nest emptied of home smelled of
decaying innards—
of a sparrow—devoured by a heron.
The men stayed for a while,
speculating what to do with the form
festered by the breeze—
contemplating the murder of crows over the body.
Onyedikachi Chinedu is a Nigerian poet. They are a 2021 HUES Foundation scholar, a poetry reader for Non.Plus Lit and Guesthouse Lit; their works are published and forthcoming in Guesthouse Lit, Anomaly, The Cortland Review, The Hellebore, Rappahannock Review, Midway Journal, and elsewhere.
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