Light by Gospel Chinedu

I submerge in water with a body of mud. I emerge, light

–weight. Burning brightly. Red as clay. I sing a moth into a light 

bulb. And the moon falls asleep. I’m naked in my mortal hunger. 

I stay awake learning how fire gobbles up wood to perfect light.

I wonder if the stars wither because they’re planted in vapour &

dust. When the lantern’s eye runs out of oil, we gather fireflies to light

it up. Once, in the laboratory, I seethed a sample of night in a kettle 

& hoped that its darkness evaporated. Once, I found a plethora of light

rays emitting from a dirge. It led me into a dark house. There, grandpa 

stood before a concave mirror but the image formed was a candle light.

Gospel Chinedu

Gospel Chinedu (Frontier IV) is a Nigerian poet, an undergraduate at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, and a member of the Frontiers Collective (a poetry family).

He tweets @gonspoetry and enjoys playing chess when he’s neither writing nor reading poetry.

Poem sourced from OnlyPoems.