SOMETHING IS ALWAYS BURNING

wherever water becomes a servant to an unseen war. I

say this

for you to know how it is to be an empty basket

under rain. Nothing fills you like

your shadow cleaving a night song into

a devoted darkness.  A city

stitches a man’s cut with a fire of needles.

A man says leave and

I’m seeing my body molded like

moimoi in a new widow’s belly. What is hunger

when the heart is enough eternal meal for grief. What

erupts from

a silenced body if not a damned night

taking the rare shape of tears? A bit, my wound

shifts like a boy’s last breath trying to

wring flames out of his body.          A book opens hopelessly like

dawns with no more men to yawn. Everything is now flickers. And

a page is my body, in summary of a rust car. abandoned. You don’t

move further when you’re a tired feet clutched with

1967 slippers on the road linking your absences. a

kind of tremor rushed like wind, arranged my beard a little,

and a grieving dictionary flips to page 404. A subject to a damned city.

My body, a disengaging content, and I’m believing here

that it isn’t an error.

By Mesioye Johnson

Biography:

Mesioye Johnson is a bird of many colors who writes to heal his darkness and the world around his waist. His works are featured or forthcoming in African Writer, Eunoia review, Sub-Saharan magazine and somewhere else. He is @mesioyejohnson on Twitter