West Trade Review Online Exclusive: "Starry, starry night" by Ernest Ògúnyẹmí

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Ernest Ògúnyẹmí is a writer and editor from Nigeria. His work has appeared/ is forthcoming in AGNI, Tinderbox, Southern Humanities Review, Joyland, the McNeese Review, No Tokens, among other places. He is a staff writer at Open Country.

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Ernest Ògúnyẹmí

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Starry, starry night

the body passes through

what it passes through—

party of pills, green white,

golden light, pigeon eyes;

sanctuary of tasteless things,

pink tongue of dirty dawn;

the light forgets you these days,

wound cradled in a wound;

touch everything with the fire,

still the ash will not be yours;

what we find by throttling, what

we lose by longing

for yesterday’s silver spoon;

they say Let go, hold yourself,

the rain will be done by morning—

but it has been cold night all your life;

the deer darts through the woods

in the canvas, God should have a number

you can call on days when

the beast turns you into

a bad soprano in a fine song;

I have lost everything, all I have

is this borrowed mouth, burrowed

bag of wintered bones:

tomorrow I will be gone

& nothing will die again.

Image by Tomasz Zaczeniuk (IG: @fotowizjer)

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