add a noun stain to him,
& he becomes too much to know.
hinting this and that,
& I sulk at male determiners:
curious minder messing our lifetime,
or measuring happiness by a radius.
the calmest of his paws,
full of sprayed lines.
I’ve stirred distance, rehearsing a kick to please an opponent once.
my father knows this journey.
the ruralness, taking cramps into his bowed arms.
his hairless top: a circumference of split chart,
meshed to a mud pie π.
Isn’t it strange
to own this much formula,
& not solve a world problem to its barest minimum?
sometimes, the sum outdoes his bent flesh,
to sheath his linear hands spacelike:
an obtuse angle,
pressed to series of laid lines— messed with a sharp weight.
till his reflex picks it: a mud pie, & alternates.
& he resumes his Hindu sport on a docile kin,
inciting a degree of hatred.
his hands, trying the lengths it could go to spoon our luck.
I’ve known this daycare, twenty-one years in a stretch.
in a home of small latitude.
in my algebra peep through blocks where they forge this maths,
to amaze us with some much route, springing a mutual answer.
Nnadi Samuel
Nnadi Samuel holds a B.A in English & literature from the University of Benin. His works have been previously published/ forthcoming in Suburban Review, Seventh Wave Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, PORT Magazine, The Cordite Poetry Review, Gordon Square Review, Rough Cut press, Trampset, Stonecrop Review, The Elephant Magazine, Liquid Imagination, Eunoia Review & elsewhere. He won the Canadian Open Drawer contest 2020. He won the Splendor of Dawn Poetry Contest April 2020, got shortlisted in the annual Poet’s Choice award & was the second-prize winner of the EOPP 2019 contest. A longlist of the NSPP 2020 prize, & Pushcart Nominee. He is the author of “Reopening of Wounds”. He reads for U-Right Magazine. He tweets @Samuelsamba10.
Nnadi Samuel (samuelnnadi4@gmail.com)
Twitter:@Samuelsamba10
Photo by Dima Pechurin on Unsplash