Portrait As Jonah Olumide Manuel- Augur Literary Society

PORTRAIT AS JONAH

by Olumide Manuel

(Content warnings: illness, grief, death, implied drowning)

half sleeping
into death—

one with storms,
all the pebbles

of grief whirls
the seadreaming.

I only dream
of water when

I've led her
heart to thirst.

all around I carry
a whale of wanting

in my hoodie,
a living chiliagon—

one day it swam
into my headache,

& after three days
of medication

I realized the lie
of our hasty end.

the shore has
eaten my escape.

forever with the sea,
forever chasing pebbles.

OLUMIDE MANUEL, NGP IX, is a writer, a biology teacher and an environmentalist. He is a nominee of Pushcart Prize, and the winner of Aké Climate Change Poetry Prize 2022. His chapbook, Hopemonger, won the Nigerian NewsDirect Chapbook Award 2022. His works have been published in Magma Poetry, Trampset, Uncanny Magazine, Agbowó Magazine, Up The Staircase Quarterly, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere.

Portrait as Jonah was edited by Conyer Clayton. It can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 6.1.