Ars Poetica as an Incurable Disease – Alaga Unwonamunu

to request a poem from a dying body is to ask its song to travel instead, to outstrip itself of its throbbing. for even in the sunniest of afternoons two autumns ago, the light of day did not see my grandmother’s palms — the way her fingers curled into themselves in perpetual resistance. to read them, I often had to bring the candelabra too close; closer than was safe for paper, spilling molten luminance into every crevasse. the first time the bleeding came, she implored the universe; she asked questions no apothecary could answer. and when the pain outgrew her body, she sang a shadow into every name she knew. for she always wanted me to know that what lives inside us is irreplaceable. that there’s nothing as irremediable as a broken bone. and every time her skin swelled with pus, every time she shed a funk like slough, every time she willed her legs, two overgrown yams, to move in obedience; she was betrayed by her own body. that night I held unto the last ligament, begging, but when the heart unlearns that it, too, can flutter — a butterfly basking in morning light — no question, no plea, is plausible.


[Author Bio:] Alaga Unwomanumu is a 17 year-old Ekpeye-born Nigerian student, villager, art-lover and literature enthusiast who writes poetry and short fiction. He has just gained admission into the University of Port Harcourt to read Law. He was longlisted for the Muse Journal New Voices Prize in Poetry.

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