After Alec Benjamin
by Olumide Manuel
The hip of this fellowship is red
reclining warmth this methanol
maims my blue anxiety like the sunset
spooning the 6:48pm to a shade of night
that shimmers down my broken face—
wearing the sunset as an aurora of bruises
back home my mother saw me and
folded me for a tendering my glee did not
diminish I love to think
about the humour of pummeling an epithelium
to red softness —sinewing
its tightness against a blink of adrenaline—
panting with raised fist shirts torn
bully boys doing crude violence because they know
no better— my father who was more worried
about who carried more bloody stars
saw how well I shine with my broken nos nodded
& it felt like I stormed through a manning-up rite already
—my head a Jupiter with an atmosphere of ruptured
bubbles the lesions like its many moons
Olumide Manuel, NGP IX, is a writer, a biology teacher and an environmentalist. He is a nominee of the Pushcart Prize, and the winner of Aké Climate Change Poetry Prize 2022. His works have been published on Magma Poetry, Trampset, Uncanny Magazine, Agbowó Magazine, Up The Staircase Quarterly, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere.