January Nocturne
By Pamilerin Jacob
Midnight, with its coal hands,
has smeared my heart with longing,
has made a bell of silence & stapled
echoes along the hallways of January.
The fan’s three fingers
keep chasing one another,
with murderous intent.
Behind every door, darkness
& the thrum of veins, capillaries—
an opera of living.
Should I pray? Should I praise
the thundering in the distance?
That lightning streaming
out of God, like blood
from an artery slashed.
The way palm oil spreads
on a white shirt, reddening into disappointment,
so too, this Harmattan
drifting in between the pores of Sango-Ota.
January, you are longer than the Nile.
So boring now, this tottering you
do, drunk on the violence
of my waiting. Know this:
Your hands around my neck, choking
me, only crack open the hope
of February within me.
Midnight, with its coal hands,
has smeared my heart with longing,
has made a bell of silence & stapled
echoes along the hallways of January.
The fan’s three fingers
keep chasing one another,
with murderous intent.
Behind every door, darkness
& the thrum of veins, capillaries—
an opera of living.
Should I pray? Should I praise
the thundering in the distance?
That lightning streaming
out of God, like blood
from an artery slashed.
The way palm oil spreads
on a white shirt, reddening into disappointment,
so too, this Harmattan
drifting in between the pores of Sango-Ota.
January, you are longer than the Nile.
So boring now, this tottering you
do, drunk on the violence
of my waiting. Know this:
Your hands around my neck, choking
me, only crack open the hope
of February within me.
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BIO:
Pamilerin Jacob is a Nigerian poet whose poems have appeared in Barren Magazine, Agbowó, Palette Poetry, IceFloe Press, Lit Quarterly & elsewhere. He is a member of The UnSerious Collective, Founding Editor of EREMITE POETRY, staff at WildPinePoetry, Olumo Review & a mentor in the SprinNG Fellowship. Author of the chapbook, Gospels of Depression, & two others; he is the Curator of PoetryColumn-NND, a poetry column in Nigerian NewsDirect, a national newspaper. |
