Bodega | This lonely night is not a reflection of the moon, and

This lonely night is not a reflection of the moon, and

A town spread under its light.

I am no stranger in this soil.

What walks into my head

Walks out through another body close to it.

The sea settles at my feet;

Its wind wrestles by, un-trapping bumps cornered at my skin.

I offer my appreciation as an ablution:

A halo straightens out at my head.

A boy tucks at my shirt

And his ice-cream melts away.

I remember the day a girl saw me at a mall

And carted her smiles away.

I’d wanted to stop her and drop

A pint of sunray into her palm.

But you know sometimes some things halt and disappear.

Like I said before, it’s night: a lonely one.

Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto (@ChinuaEzenwa) is from Owerri-Nkworji in Nkwerre, Imo state, Nigeria and grew up between Germany and Nigeria. He has won the Association Of Nigerian Author’s Literary Award for Mazariyya Ana Teen Poetry Prize, 2009; Speak to the Heart Inc. Poetry Competition, 2016. He became a runner-up in Etisalat Prize for Literature, flash fiction, 2014. He won the Castello di Duino Poesia Prize for an unpublished poem, 2018, which took him to Italy. He was the recipient of New Hampshire Institute of Art’s 2018 Writing Award, and also the recipient of the New Hampshire Institute of Art’s 2018 scholarship to its MFA Program. Some of his works have appeared in Lunaris Review, AFREADA, Rush Magazine, Kalahari Review, Palette, Knicknackery, Praxismagazine, Bakwa Magazine, Strange Horizons, Whale Road, One, Ake Review, Crannòg magazine and elsewhere.

90 – February 2020

By Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto

This lonely night is not a reflection of the moon, and