I remember the nights under the charmed light of the fluorescent in the hall . . .
Ringtones murmuring in the broken pews around . . .
The nude window widowed of glass is a mirror to the world.
The buildings outside are dead-silent and a single bloody light burns in the murky distance on the diaphanous crown of the telephone pylon.
The sky is a palate of ink— a subdued fresco— and quietude reigns here where
Charmed lights shroud those multicoloured bodies bent over papers
Thoughts disembodied from thoughts . . . and this hermit’s prayer drops like a drip:
Light, I ask for inspiration! Let me not implore in vain in your bewitched phosphorescence! All life, I now detest them— I seek entrance into these stacked-shelved rooms . . . never will I hug the whoring streets, serenading spirits sinking high into the necroendless night . . .
About the author
Chimezie Chika’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in Aerodrome, Brittle Paper, Praxis Magazine, The Kalahari Review, and several other journals. In 2013 he was a finalist for the Africa Book Club Shorts Reads Competition. In 2015 he participated in the International Writivism Creative Writing Workshop in Lagos. He divides his time between Onitsha and Owerri.
