night room. mosquitoes mimicking 

      tones of the funeral. & i force my terror

into obedience. 

it begins this way: a mug of black

            coffee in the marriage of unleavened bread;

a cell phone streaming

a gay marriage on TikTok. then, a piece of 

                                                jazz lullabying

me into the land of Morpheus.  

& in the nightmare, tragedy holds ecstasy to

ransom.  

gory from afar how a truck

upon honking

crushes schoolchildren across the road.

save for journalism, it’s tragic watching

a harvest of blood, bones crushed

           like shards of brown pottery.

i pass little faith in hospitals—restrooms for

haemorrhaging nominees of the grave. 

& if you ask: how many die in the country’s hospitals?

i will tell you as many as the poor, too handicapped

to chatter Boston’s aeroplanes. 

final appeal: on your next flight, 

appear where the air questions the essence of life.

there’s more to citizenship than hawking

the federal sobriquet where every clause ends

with a sorry.

---

Nweke, Benard Okechukwu (he/him) is a Nigerian poet from Ezza, Ebonyi State; based in Onitsha, Anambra State. He’s the winner of the 2022 Neptune Prime poetry prize. A trainee journalist—studying Mass Communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. His works have appeared, and, or, are forthcoming in the West Trade Review, Querencia Press LLC 2022 print anthology, Best of Mad Swirl 2022 anthology, Threposs anthology, Kalahari Review, Nantygreens, Rogue Agent, Isele magazine, Salamanda Ink, The Ballast Journal, & elsewhere. He tweets @romeobenokechukwu