JUXTAPOSITIONS
by CHIWENITE ONYEKWELU
Say it is the wood pulp and not the wood.
Or the bile duct not the bile. Oil on water
on oil, like an infinite ocean
of oil. Say the human body becomes
a vehicle for worm. The locomotive of
hipbones and tooth. Once white, beaten ash,
unrecognizable except for the rancid
smell of rot. Say there is a moth
drowning in the light, a fish in the water
gasping for breath. Everything receding,
again & again, like a powdered keg
of dust. The gnome. Then the genome.
Then the geometric. Say there’s a world
where you save your Messiah
from ruin, forgive your God
of his mortal sin. Impasto:
this phthalic blue of paint, angled to light.
Inside the light an unmistakable figure
muscled as a man. Bone-white
and feral. The long tibia
of his nonhuman legs. Say the lemon is
not the lime, and it’s in the nature of nature
to draw up an unfamiliar lot.
All the juxtapositions
that curl along a kelp. The blue-greenness
of life against a backdrop of almost blue,
almost green, neither here
nor there but still. We’re
asked to sprout gently like a tree. But all
we can really do is wait, all of us
powerless as our leaves shrivel.
RUMI’S BELL
by CHIWENITE ONYEKWELU
We might as well hang over a stonewall, like the Tsar bell.
Our small mouths a molten bronze.
The loud hush of unrung lives, slowed to static,
as if a horse in motion which suddenly rebels.
The wound is where the light enters you, says Rumi.
I remind you of this as you capsize,
slip into the depth of a now-fragile life. Consider
the shape of bells: cup-like; wide neck & a flared mouth.
Consider the hollow from whence their music gush.
Swollen as they are. Bent towards the world’s metallic ear,
they sing. I want you to want the stubbornness
only a bell can wield. In Japan, Buddhist temples
ring bells 180 times, each one signifying a world
of desire that must be overcome.
Consider your body’s volition to ruin, the rot
in your eye, consider, even,
this dark hour which gives meaning to light. Abyssinian
Horse. Once upon the history of bells,
they were rung to summon men to God, & then,
to summon the devil out of men.
The constant: Polyphony. The sheer ability of sound to seduce,
draw the sugar out of the sugarplum. Rumi was right.
It’s a door that which we thought was a wound.
Like him, I dare you to emerge
from the dank basement of your life. I don’t mean to sidestep
your hurts but to remind you that a dying man
is either the world’s loudest bell
or a bell in a tower ringing alone.
author pic here
Chiwenite Onyekwelu is the author of the poetry chapbook, Exiled (Red Bird, 2025). His poetry appears in Hudson Review, Cincinnati Review, The Adroit Journal, Rattle, and elsewhere. He won the 2026 Blossom Poetry Contest and the Ladi Kwali Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the Coppice Prize and the London International Literary Prizes. He has also been a finalist for the Bridport Prize, the Alpine Fellowship Prize, and the Black Warrior Review Poetry Contest. He won the 2024 After the End Poetry Prize organized at Oxford University, PRISM International’s Pacific Spirit Poetry Contest, and the Hudson Review inaugural Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize. Chiwenite holds a Bachelor of Pharmacy (B. Pharm) from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria.
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