Radio bodies & other poems by John Chinaka Onyeche

Radio Bodies

So many such nights, I am bent like a key. The child is
a porcelain egg in the hands of a clock. The realities
of home are built from sugar before the jawline of the
sea; the coming of the teeth erases the trace of the
house built with our wandering feet that are now
fossils in the rock of becoming. Some nights are black
dogs, and others are drawers full of moths, of
laughter and static from not touching the radio bodies
of your kids, learning what frequency broadcasts your
fear. If this is not the telephone ringing from inside its
own coffin; where you hope the echo will answer, but
deep down the silence is still stretching, where even
the dice have grown feathers and play their tricky
tunes to the single photograph of a man wearing a
shadow’s clothing, who was never developed in the
solution of love. Many of such nights walk in on stilts
of glass, leaping and begging for a different channel.
Such nights are spent burning the screen of a phone,
watching the smiling faces of one’s kids that the
wedding cake has swallowed whole.

Sometimes I Hinge My Heart On Faith

I have hinged my heart on this thing called faith.
Every coming of a new day I say to myself: oh, thy
will be done. I have said it even more than I have
revised the name of the man who once walked up to
me proclaiming that he was the answers that I seek.
What creature indeed made this thing called language,
sometimes I wonder what is the good of proclaiming
anything at all. Sometimes I think it would have been
better if he had left the world mute, everyone going
on their own without this chaos that we call speaking
and language. Have you not witnessed silence for
once? The blessings it offers to the one who
welcomes it out of this chaotic world where everyone
and everything wants to speak and to be heard. Faith,
isn’t it like that silence that is within, offering the
troubled water of self quietness that in the end only
says that which is needed for the stillness within?
With faith, I have peace. Oh, let thy will be done as all
else now, the words are offered with peace and
assurance. Sometimes I wonder what being indeed
offered us this chaos as words, and silence, faith, and
peace all at once that I daily seek to hinge my heart
there, and be at peace with the word; oh, let your will
be done. Sometimes I wonder, sometimes I wonder

My father’s words before his voyage

I have returned to this room again. I may as well have
journeyed a thousand miles away from who I used to
be, to this man I work daily to become, and from the
wishes which dressed my good old days. I walk into
the living room, pick from my bag of memories and
debris of time, this old portrait of myself behind
many rivers of life. I hang them before a mirror, burn
off parts of me that no longer make me handsome. I
remember my father in one of my dreams; he held my
hands, walked me into the terrain of manhood. I
remember his words of how to know myself from
wherever I find myself. He said it’s the art of letting
go and moving on where life calls our names and
circumstances answer. I am here again, with the
mirror and my portrait speaking different languages.
None can answer life’s question better than they who
live the life, for if this flitting breeze dazzles away
from this house, who will the ranging sea swallow?

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Bio
John Chinaka Onyeche is a Nigerian writer based in Port Harcourt, and a historian from Etche in Rivers State. While he is dedicated to ensuring that the full scope of history is accurately represented, John now writes about family, broken home, the effect on its victims, and survival. His writing can be found in various journals, including York Literary Review, McNeese Review, Pier Review, Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival Anthology, Tilted House Journal, The Shallow Tales Review, Akewi Magazine, and Brittle Paper, etc. He is a Best of Net/Pushcart nominee respectively.