The Old House
How much blood is enough blood to call me my father’s son? I look like him, they say. & I tell them that the mirror has no truth in it. It’s full of the past, of everything I’m trying so hard to leave behind. I sound like a wounded river. I cannot rust the old nails piercing my ribs. I cannot drown the agonies. I cannot quench the thirst of my dying joy. Neither can I reflect the face of the beautiful morning sun. My mother was a seamstress. She said the chances of a miracle are thin as threads. Yet, I cross the lines unstitched. My palms are like a tree. They carry a handful of ripe memories. The heaviness of my heart is the weight of a breadfruit. She says when a breadfruit reaches its age, it falls. My prayers fall off like manna from the heaven of my mouth, from the bulk of my heart. & my tongue is in peril of molding a plethora of Amens that do not carry kinetic energy. My body is a house with no threshold. My adrenaline is fright and fright. In the old house, I walk through the back door to meet colorful dreams covered with weeds of uncertainties at the backyard. The front door always leads to the mouth of a gun spitting bullets. & between both doors, there’s an ambience of loneliness, sorrow & that’s where I’m at my safest.
Gospel Chinedu is a Nigerian poet from the Igbo descent. He currently is an undergraduate at the College Of Health Sciences, Okofia where he studies Anatomy. He loves music and is a big fan of Isak Danielson. His poems are mostly speculative and cuts across different themes. He is a 2021 Starlit Award Winner, Runner Up for the Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize 2023, the Blurred Genre Contest (Invisible City Lit), 2023, Honorable Mention in the Stephen A. Dibiase Poetry Prize, 2023, and also a finalist in the Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets, 2023. His works of poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Chestnut Review, Worcester Review, Augur Magazine, Fantasy, Fiyah, The Deadlands, Channel, Apparition Lit, Mud Season Review, Trampset, The Drift, Consequence Forum, The Rialto, BathMagg, and other places. Gospel tweets @gonspoetry.
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