REINVENTION
I
The rope of distance
broke
you sat there
reinventing Lagos
islands got drenched
inside us
black crows torched
our scars the lessons
of attraction
the avalanche might
actually get kinder
wandering in all capes
but the death of desire
is not what you keep
hearing about
II
Soon all this
will be memory
stitching yourself
into a blue sky, an open door
that’s what it says
in get-aways
landscape, rifle targets
& other things going on
angel of history
cruising through the Death Valley
love & howitzer tanks
enlarge the musical score
as stylish as
the bright tease of a leather skirt
you glide inside
the radiance of the wound
MAPWORK
Northbound train
lower level
and the most annoying daylight
as if I could learn
something from
anagram puzzles
mapwork, pulsant
a conversation about it
a tizzy fit
ice cubes, headlines,
tough as nails midwesterner
pondering the next move
I couldn’t stay still
spiraled with a missing letter
shape-shifted with painted pages
HIGHER SHADOWS
Casper David Friedrich
in the Stockholm archipelago
windmill bare bum strobes
a mirkin to help him get a feeling
for what marabou feathers were doing
suede ankle boots carousel horse
higher shadows when he comes to that corner,
you shut up a curmudgeon’s fear of the saccharine
love breaks on infallible stone
so much devastation so much
score-settling
turn around now
chronology is a scam
Uche Nduka is a Nigerian-American poet, collagist and essayist. He is the author of twelve volumes of poems of which the most recent are Ijele, Nine East, Living in Public. His poetry has been translated into German, Finnish, Italian, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian. He presently lives and teaches in New York City.
Cover photo credit: Pedro Szekely