By Precious Harrison
My childhood memories are shaped like the boats I saw as a little child standing on the covert,
somewhere just near the Abonnema wharf.
I sing my memory. I, the quiet child holding up a crab. A dream floating in the face of the songs
of yesterday, shaped like acoustic guitars.
Tonight I become a star, a cloudburst. All my boyhood memories are dreams full of light & oil &
dust & moonless nights, punctured by stray bullets.
Now here, my memory is a yellow picture. An oil painting, punctured by stray bullets, smeared
with crude oil, drowning into the sea.
I knew how to sing the national anthem with my two eyes closed, even long before the
fisherman’s net broke and a school of fishes
broke the net of history. The links of the net warn out as the future tenses of hope we all carry on
our tongues. Telling ourselves that the horizon
is the fragile place which lies between whatever takes the form of a mother and asphyxiation.
Before the country becomes a cemetery I want to hold faith
beneath my tongue in a way that makes death long for light. I know when I get to the shore I
shall meet the waves hissing names of wanderlust fathers,
& the coastal winds, witnesses to the silent last prayers that float on the shores. the unsung
epiphanies, striated on History’s tongue.
Precious Chidera Harrison, a writer, poet and artist, born to Igbo parents, was raised in Port
Harcourt, Rivers state, Nigeria. He is a native of Obowo in Imo state, Nigeria. His poems have
been published on Poemify, Williwash Webzine, Songs of the Wind anthology, and the 2022
Chinua Achebe Essay/Poetry anthology. He is an experimental artist with a wide range of
interests and an ear for music.
Hot Pot Magazine 