May I find love in whatever body

that gives me home. Amen.                                  —Romeo Oriogun

The eye has a tattoo of a burning bush, but

the charred grey of paper is all we see. This

is why we search deep for the remains of

yesterday in that harrowing cave of our lover’s

eye. This is how we remember home. How at first

a violent fire dream would mean the flames are

bloodletting, but are in fact a sign of the exiled

swarm exiting the wet flesh of a land claiming

their feet from treading the wire of hope. Right

here—across the gloaming shoreline, are all kinds

of wounds, swirling and dipping in the horizon; I

see a cohort of pilgrims perched atop a mountain

where the shadow of God now recedes. The soft

word of their tongue dislodges, through the tooth

-less pianos of their mouths, all the ones wandering

and lost. Listen to the watery call of home:

It is I, the one who forgot the first song his mother taught him,

& not the birds—every morning, they don’t forget to return

the sweetened balsam to their mother’s wound. My

blemish is as clear as hoof marks in the carmine

where every mottled step brands me a prodigal.

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Prosper C. Ìféányí is a Nigerian poet. His works are featured or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, New Delta Review, Parentheses Journal, Identity Theory and elsewhere.