What It Means To be a Writer in Nigeria

If I was more courageous I'd say half dead. 
The thing about dying is you never 

arrive. Before the worms there is the knife. 
And before the knife, a hand. 

I’ve learnt that even pain can be beautiful 
depending on where, depending 

on what part of the wound you peer into. 
Often, I’m told: You're all good writers, 

does it run in your Nigerian blood? But then
a house on fire is still a house on fire 

despite the spark. Look at it this way: over 
time a camel unlearns the language of water, 

even a cactus grows in desert heat, but how 
spectacular is their suffering? 

My God. Give me water & take the fame. 
Assure me of my next lunch & watch me 

slacken my ravenous teeth. On twitter, 
a poet I admire tells me to Do what you can 

to leave. I’m reminded, again, that unlike home 
America is a field capable of bloom.  

How I must love her the way a drowning man 
loves whatever stick is thrown at him.

Love her even though she wants the music
but not my voice. In my suffering, the blade

offers a glint. & of course I’m grateful for the 
hand that held me from birth. But I'm grateful, 

equally, for the one that catches me when I’m 
tossed away. One heart for you & one for you.

**The last line is from a poem by Ada Limon




We Don’t Begin With The Ache

Although I’m certain that’s why she phoned. 
     I'm in my room, 
bent over a table littered with pills. When she 
     asks How are you, 

I say I’m fine, even though my chest aches. 
     It has to be love,
the way I arrange each response, like mint notes,
      hand it over 

to my mother through the wire. I say I’ll be
      home when school ends, 
say it like faith, or like Adam explaining to God. 
     There is something

about the truth that strips me naked. Points me 
     towards a narrowed
vein. How, back then, she kept asking me to sit 
     upright, to stand 

with my chest straight as a child’s. I should have 
     known. Angina 
is also a function of habit. You could inherit whatever
     chest, but the ache,

like garden plants, grows where you plough. By 
    the wall, my gym mat 
is gathering dust. I’ve not worked out since after 
    the test. Still, for her sake 

I say I’m fine. It's a love trick I play for her: she asks 
    of my ache & I make it
disappear. She asks of lungs, & in place of a rot, I stun
   her with gills.









About the Author:

Chiwenite Onyekwelu’s debut poetry chapbook, EXILED, will be published in 2024 by Red Bird Chapbooks. His poems appear in ONLY Poems, Adroit Journal, Frontier, Palette, Hudson Review, Chestnut Review, Gutter Magazine, and elsewhere. He was the winner of the Hudson Review Inaugural Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. He won the 2020 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize. He has served as Chief Editor for The School of Pharmacy Agulu, where he’s currently an undergraduate.

*feature image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay