Echezonachukwu Nduka
Featured image: Rain and straw © A. Anupama 2017
The slim girl on ash pants becomes
water at the sight of my brother.
She pours herself on his bed, on the floor,
wets his pants and leaves him panting.
There is no day that dares the fire in her eyes.
Nor is there a night that nurses a greater ambition
than the way she moans. The slim girl on ash pants
says my brother’s cigars are sticks of promise.
She would light one, puff twice, and mumble words
about how her eyes have become a window through
which my brother escapes his fears. I do not know how
a girl becomes an enchantress by seeking to name flames
but I know that my brother’s room is a theatre of sorts
where ladies (especially this one) troop in to melt and become
one with his body, stroking his beards, caressing his hairy chest,
and listening to him speak like an automated stereo voice.
He knows how to drink ladies like water and wine,
this boy; and he drinks and drinks and drinks.
Born and raised in Nigeria, Echezonachukwu Nduka is a poet, pianist, and writer who was educated at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and Kingston University, London, England. Recipient of the 2016 Korea-Nigeria Poetry Prize, his literary works have been published or are forthcoming in Expound, The Bombay Review, Ake Review, The Kalahari Review, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, African Writer, Saraba, Jalada, Afridiaspora, The New Black Magazine, A Thousand Voice Rising: An Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry, Black Communion: Poems of 100 New African Poets, and elsewhere. He has performed as a stage poet at Kingston University London, Anambra Book & Creativity Festival, Ake Arts & Book Festival, and Goethe Institut Lagos (Nigeria). He writes from New Jersey.