After Sage Ravenwood’s “Bookends”

Here the hand that burrows deep.

      A son’s bruised

face. Here a man’s violence

      leathered

thin. What other evidence than

      these scars,

the refusal & refusal to walk back

      home.

Some days I awaken in a distant

land, reach towards my eyes

       & search

for moist. I have been dry longer

       than even a

thigh deprived of touch. There are

       days the

hand returns, old & quivering—

      its wireless

attempts to hold me close. Between 

us there are eight cities, familiar

       paths

more rust than bridge. When he

       says I

love you, it is the first time in

      twenty-three

years, so I jerk the phone away

      from my ear,

away because reflex is the body’s

      way of

revealing shock. Times like this,

       I yearn

deeply for the years before the

       hand:

Each season of corn; those cold

nights around a fireside

       & his

blanket afterwards; even his arms

       spread out

as I run homewards from school.

       Love was

always there when no one looked,

       & the

hand, quivering, points me to it—

       Here, it’s asking

me to see beyond the clenched fist,

       to separate

the man I knew from the thing I didn’t.

---

Chiwenite Onyekwelu is the author of the poetry chapbook, EXILED (forthcoming from Red Bird Chapbooks, 2023). His works appear in Palette, Adroit Journal, Mizna, Cincinnati Review, Chestnut Review, Lolwe, Gutter Magazine, Bombay Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. He was recently shortlisted for Alpine Fellowship Prize, as well as the Writing Ukraine Poetry Prize 2023. In 2022, he was a runner-up for the Foley Poetry Prize, the Surging Tide Poetry Contest, and the 3rd Prize winner of Anita McAndrews Poetry Award. Chiwenite has served as Chief Editor for The School of Pharmacy Agulu, where he’s an undergraduate