black people in love
ISSUE 1 Poetry

Christening of Peculiar Things – Oliaku Wisdom Ikechukwu 

Call the world how it unfolds,
a feeble, starving petal growing in your blistered palms
towards the sun, from the spaces between your fingers 
where mine used to intertwine.
Call my love how it reaches,
this nimble, persistent thing floating in an ocean
of hurt inside of me, inviting you in
(or the thought of you inviting me in), 
In walls of a heart holding chants and space
until my mind becomes your temple, 
you wickedly delectable thing.
Call a rose what it is, greet its thorns
and salute the pain it leaves (once she leaves)
and you are folded into March, sliced into three, 
one for her to think about in faint lethargy, 
one for the world to commiserate,
and the last for solitude to try to destroy.
Call a shadow what it brings,
all the silent wandering, from dark
unto obscurity, always lingering like a nightmare, 
like a bad kiss in June, my first kiss with you.
call the stars what they hide
a million wishes, all of its light to obscure the obscurer.


Wisdom is an avid reader and a weaver of words, with his first stint with poetry coming at a 2015 spoken word performance. He is a multiple-time finalist in the Tush Magazines writing contest, a content strategist, and an SEO writer with years of experience. When not lost in verses or re-reading Christopher Okigbo’s The Passage, Wisdom can be found drowning in his Indie Folk playlist and getting inspired by Bon Iver.

5 COMMENTS

  1. “Call a rose what it is, greet its thorns
    and salute the pain it leaves…”

    The presence of beauty is not necessarily the absence of pain.👏🏾

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