Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected three poems by Uche Nduka for his series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
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USS Nebraska (BB14) (1918) (image via National Archives and Records Administration)
Up to the High Dive
up to the high dive
the showdown a cannonball in hot pursuit
blue veins alfalfa ditch
cut to amyl nitrate
lemurs abscond trigger warning
stress test & yet here i am
i have never been overawed by aimlessness
without finishing what’s in my glass without
renouncing bipedal stimulus proactive crepuscular
without once breaking a stride i am amenable
to colonnades that serve me bam bam
drop the phone espionage is a fucking joke
that’s enough foxtrot roll around the crocus
threw away the icebox & snoozed through love
conforming to acrylic toboggan
a hole where a church once blared
i hate saying that silence counts but it does
the lasso the fire of the white rose the pressure
of motivation it happens when a dialogue happens
is desire the same thing as a caress?
twisting around what the axis posits
if this is repurposing why are we running?
legend paints our faces
two karmas flowing into each other
what part of love is just one’s belief in it?
tanks? prison camps? opera is not only for fat men
candies? starship? money for something
risen to a delirious plum
outside the subway
this is not what it’s really like to stand stage right
because if worse comes to worse we’ll rip it up
stand up & be echoed says the sauna
i lost my gloves in the Rhine
ejector & ululant
that something is natural doesn’t necessarily
mean it is good or right
stories of the Lord & tourmaline
the woman is the Lord
heaven climbs into a waiting cab
Art Nouveau
i will keep throwing a wrecking ball
the mind is a funky street light
cans of spray paint searching for
the filth behind their truth without a pause
to steamroll over cuttings strippings
frantic phonebooking further away
from thoughts hanging on sledgehammers
gold seam gunk glop
there’s a balsamic climax going on
meeting the outsider’s outsider
fuck off nervous breakdown!
walking towards Art Nouveau pictures
she is going to burn she is going
to dance on top of army tanks
you made the better move
i was too uptight for love
pitched it at a surfer
barreled down to your purity
an abused script let go
sick of inside jokes stage fright
moon the tip of her tail
which brownies will my website support?
plumbing pipe cart truck pan
she was resting
he was in the wrong place
rooms without views
unscan unsolid wood unPlexiglas
he believed the music on her wall
living in the West but not of it
what is silvery braid?
it is obscene not to understand
the opposite of genocide
it is hard to grasp how much grief
is still in me for the death of
that poet shot at Opi Junction in 1967
read your story from mine if you wish
somewhere within a tight spot
double take of atemporal shadow
every part of you is the center of the world
Bets Off
Imprints or not, blue jays are laurels. Some archives meant for a chasm. The detour is helpless. It seeks delusions. To break bread with bread in springtime’s ragtime. Statistics flow by. Across the city, war kissed their philosophies, gave them a verse to sing. With chords of pleasure through the arterial library. You don’t have to figure it all out before you begin. Albany’s tweed bush & meanness of odd matchup. Make & break it & see the maestro fall for a stripper. The permutations of post-9/11 anesthetic. Bets off. Completely badass. Upscale groceries about to be carved up. A fair shake in public opinion polls. The too-muchness is the clincher. Does your slow pace stand for something? Aficionados’ recess. Clasps the collar of the littlest lie. Facts do not always help us know what’s true. Driving one another mad is what makes us perfect. Punk-drunk, blackout drunk. To roll with the gag. Why let analysis invade your dreams? Over & against the tranced, i’m not playing by the number. Growl. Suction. Broth. Over & against meddling & swooning. Distancer. Detangler. Wherever we arrive provokes departure.
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Uche Nduka is a Nigerian-American poet, essayist, and collagist. He is the author of nine volumes of poems of which the latest is titled Nine East (SPM Publications, London, 2013). He presently lives in New York City and teaches at Pratt Institute and CUNY.
“Some people have a way with words, and other people……no have way.” –Steve Martin