GRIT
A boy with a yellow scarf ran
out from the dust storm’s teeth.
Says he inherited a yellow wound
from his father,
and because he is an alien
in his birthland,
he bequeaths a language that breaks
happiness.
Inside his arms, a sketched woman
he saw only on TV
sprawled on his edge line.
Scrubbed faceless,
she collided with the escarpment
of the Sankwala mountains—
a boy carrying
the ghost of his mother’s
lullaby on the ridge.
****
THE GHOST OF WAR
++++++++++A ghost sprawled around a barrel of palm wine,
+++++++as if it were the only teeth the war’s jaw couldn’t
+++++chew. A survivor inherited a sea otter’s face.
+++from the war. His khaki jacket emblazoned a rising sun
+emblem, as his wife’s jelly hair and son’s bacteria skin
wallowed in his mind’s court like a water buffalo. Some nights
he enfolded into a curtain’s company of loneliness
because its shadows danced in his dreams,
each for nine years
of his life.
Once, he wrestled his son’s vignette
as if separating his bowlegs from the inflamed
grenade’s maw that turned him into shredded
meat. His wife’s fractured lips perched at the edges
of his mind, her ashes buried in a dumpster
in Arochukwu.
A blue owl had advised him to purge
his mind of those memories. In attempt,
hollowness chiseled his mind’s skin, pressing
into the ribboned ghosts where he belongs.
****
Poems © Victor Ihechiluru Unachukwu
Image: ChatGPT remixed