ELECTRIC HYMN, BY ERNEST O. OGUNYEMI |
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purple boy with a mouth the color of spring, what stilled the night’s choir? what hand uprooted its song from the earth’s vein? * mirror, mirror, oracle that you are, tell me what animal waits me— eternally, I’ll be your dog, obedient as the flow of time. * no, that’s a lie— I would rather be a cat. or cattle. or anything that does not carry sorrow like a testimony. * Lord, lazarus me: I want to flaunt into the house of death & come out unscathed— no taste of soil on my tongue, no moth lodged in my mouth, my mother alive in my hands like an electric hymn. * Lord, this too: give me back the body that preceded this. |
Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí is a writer and editor from Nigeria. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Joyland, Tinderbox, Yemassee, Journal Nine, The Indianapolis Review, Down River Road, and elsewhere. He is the curator of The Fire That Is Dreamed of: The Young African Poets Anthology. A finalist for the 2020 Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets, he is on the editorial board at Palette Poetry, The Masters Review, and Counterclock Journal.