Nnadi Samuel

Wreckful as the Stream, I Summon a Waterfront

I run out of ways to midwife safely, the delicate stream that burdens my core: 
plump turquoise flood—foaming in maritime rage,
begging that I miscarry it with each belly-flop that translates to 
‘nurture your liquid suffering, even when the edges are porous.’

my roof shreds with the last shoots of rain,
& the war lures me to witness a live band of granite, ramming into beauty.
wind, folding the last pleat of wave
& just like that—violence punctures the rough terrain.

the spillover blessing—a rustling shard, dotting the manuscript of silt like endnotes.

I bloodlet a nasty chorus muddling up the sheet of sand, 
where I letterhead my family on the bright side of grief.

wreckful as the stream, I tarnish whatever gorgeousness lusts after me: 
aqueduct, unspooling wet luster—a moment of unhatched bliss.

I summon a waterfront, to douse the rage that spills my future onto a borrowed past.

death lends me a body.
each breath I take—heavy as an accent,
handed down from one lineage to the next.

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Nnadi Samuel (he/him/his) holds a B.A in English & literature from the University of Benin. Author of Nature knows a little about Slave Trade selected by Tate. N. Oquendo (Sundress Publication, 2023). His works have been previously published/forthcoming in The Suburban Review, Seventh Wave Magazine, NativeSkin lit Magazine, Quarterly West, Commonwealth Writers, Foglifter, The Capilano Review, Poetry Ireland, The Spectacle Magazine, Arc Poetry, and elsewhere. A three-time Best of the Net, and seven-time Pushcart Nominee, he won the Angela C Mankiewicz Poetry Contest, River Heron Editor’s Prize 2022 and Bronze prize for the Creative Future Writer’s Award 2022, UK London. He tweets @Samuelsamba10.