“A Country of Bone & Medieval Rot” by Nnadi Samuel
Nnadi Samuel(he/him/his) holds a B.A in English & literature from the University of Benin. Author of 'Nature knows a little about Slave Trade' selected by Tate.N.Oquendo (Sundress Publication, 2023). A 3x Best of the Net, and 7x Pushcart Nominee. He won the River Heron Editor's Prize 2022, Bronze prize for the Creative Future Writer's Award 2022, UK London and the Virginia Tech Center for Refugee, Migrants & Displacement Studies Annual Award, 2023
A Word from the Author:
"A Country of Bone & Medieval Rot" is a framework for my full-length manuscript (work-in-progress), which is a study of how language is explicit & wounded with trauma. This poem accounts for internal violence suffered on sovereign soil, which leads to exile / migration of the masses for survival. This however, ends up in a vicious circle, as migrants seeking asylum, in turn, are faced with immigration violence on foreign soil, as this body of work unfolds.
A country's banner swallowed us whole,
& the wailing of a child tears through the border of language.
at a sacristy in Vietnam, a mother witnesses a wooden seraph
shapeshift under the dim light, & pandemonium ravages her loin
for this carved statue of the Colonists.
a Catechist in a bloodied cassock, tongues a homily in a Hebrew accent,
on a plundered field turned to wasteland.
a hand shreds through the ribs of my imagination
& fashions a toy boat named exile:
this phrase, washes my lineage ashore.
the bane of a roaming corpse that renders us homeless.
tonight, the country's vagabonds—all blade scholars, press their lips
to the ground & howl into wetness, until breathless,
hoping, the land softens at the mention of grief.
a thug empties his fist into a Kalashnikov.
in the year of slavery & nailed barracoons, palace guards lay in
a plank pose—reciting newer ways to die.
It's a fated curse, the way one generation lives to enslave the next.
each household, enduring with the absence of a male—
freshly eaten by a conflict. city of bone & medieval rot.
in a shallow plantation, a woman debones her child to fit into a casket.
"this war won't outlive our lineage" she whispers.
an uproar of dead relatives, tearing through dust.
my father turns in his grave.
"Lord, how many headstones make a cementery?"
a vulture soars over a skull,
towards the low-hanging cloud—chewed by vitiligo.
the emptiness is a torment, with sky eaten to the ground.
here, the origin of my exile.
