by Chinedu Gospel
after Camille T. Dungy
I'll tell them that the Earth’s DNA has
self-mutated again. & the oceans are still
suffering since the cyclone. Truth is, disaster
is also an invention & I’ve barred my poems
from clinging onto grief. At the Atlantic shore,
a glacier melts into the blood of a sandpiper.
& two polar bears lose their polarity to spatial
distance. In another kingdom of living things,
various species are losing their specificity to fear.
If they ask me, I'll say day & night have
been harmful in particular ways. The latter
falls on me in the dark & the former breaks me
in the light. I’ll tell them the difference between
brittle & broken is the weight of the breeze.
I’ll tell them to touch the skin of a snail &
imagine mollusks without moisture. The earth
is denaturing itself. I’m digging into my
own thirst to touch a cold spring. If they ask me,
I'll tell them I have cried rhodopsin out of my eyes.
Beauty is just an imaginary line. Look, see? It’s
morning, again. & the Earth is already traveling
towards darkness. So, what use is rhodopsin if we
only witness light to witness ruin? The earth
is ailed, & I read her a poem—O’ stupid of me.
Honestly, I’d love to be more than just a sympathy.
We should be used to times like this by now.
Bro, we should shoulder these burdens together
& pretend that the weight is bearable. The body
is unlearning too many things, including itself. So,
at the dinner table, I gather the soft-bodied
mollusks & annelids. & we dined deep into the
dark making memories until the softest of us
became the only memory. If they ask me, I'll tell
them we all survived, yes, we fucking did.
CHINEDU GOSPEL is a Nigerian poet, an ASSON student from the College of Health Sciences, Okofia. He is also a member of the Frontiers Collective. He tweets @gonspoetry, and enjoys playing chess and listening to Music when he's not busy with school work or poetry. Some of his works have been published in different online and print magazines and journals. He recently won second place in the Blurred Genre Contest, 2023.
If They Ask Me can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 6.2.
