Literature

Rapture in my Thumbprints

Recent graduate Nnadi Samuel shares a poem on bodily boundaries

The Fall of Icarus, Henri Matisse

Vesper plucks me.

the twig in my yellow wrist quakes.

below my feet, a blind convulsion staggers to watch me interview my body.

 

i crawled out to lay with the moon, to resemble the stars,

& know how the multiverse tolerates the sun and it’s migraine of shine.

 

i wore the rainbow’s colourful blade & broken dews on my skin,

knowing that every map out of my body is a recent scar.

 

the eyes indeed is a miserable thing.

it sees things it cannot hold

& allows God escape in our bloodstream.

 

no one begs to harbour his own demon, not me, not even Beelzebub.

we barely survived today because nothing gasped for our breath.

 

i plucked a feather from heaven’s eyelid,

& there was rapture looting my thumbprints.

 

i reached out to the trumpet playing on my voice;

turns out it blew the last letter holding my family’s name together.