Jekwu Anyaegbuna’s most recent poem to appear here was Bougainvillea (March 2012).

The Preparation
By Jekwu Anyaegbuna

It is evening in my eyes, although my skin
is a shimmery morning. A clock ticks
inside my pupils as my eyelids flutter
like the wings of a virgin bird.

I see my hen returning home. I see
she follows my pattern drawn with pieces of rice, 
to solve her scratching ritual of homecoming.
Her children, the many variables of a simple formula,

talk and yell, their faces straight as justice.
They do this every dusk, the sun drowsy like laziness,
as the moon prepares for a wrestling match,
in the moonlight of the moon, glad as a butterfly.

I wonder whether they’ve eaten the darkness
of the enemies’ foods, whether my hen has gone
to the enemies’ houses with her children, to reveal
my new song, and expose my outing date. They heard

me composing the song the previous week, my legs outspread
on the boughs of my compound tree, my lips and gums
bloated as happiness, a gold flute in my hands. I cannot
say whether they’ve divulged my lines of ridicule 

for the adulterous king, my lines of applause
for the sacrificial maid. If I hear this song before
its official release, I will not dispose my loquacious
hen to the most wicked butcher, my tears desiccated

like the powders of dry seasons. Instead I will compile
so many new songs that will keep her at home to listen
all day. Instead I will gag her stomach at home with
fresh corns and sorghum and rice.

Instead I will let
her contribute her
voice to my flute;
but I trust my hen.