mineral lit mag
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  • Masthead
  • Featured Poets Series
    • 3 poems by Chris Prewitt
    • 3 poems by Taylor Byas
    • 3 Poems by David Hanlon
    • 3 poems by Bailey Grey
    • 2 Poems by Seán Griffin
    • 1 Poem by Jarrett Moseley
    • 3 Poems by Hannah Cajandig-Taylor
  • Issues
    • Issue 1
    • Issue 1.5: Hozier-inspired
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 3: Recovery
    • Issue 3.5: Lana Del Rey
    • Special Summer Solstice Prose Issue
    • Issue 4.1
    • Issue 4.2
    • Still Standing
  • Home
  • About/Submissions
  • Masthead
  • Featured Poets Series
    • 3 poems by Chris Prewitt
    • 3 poems by Taylor Byas
    • 3 Poems by David Hanlon
    • 3 poems by Bailey Grey
    • 2 Poems by Seán Griffin
    • 1 Poem by Jarrett Moseley
    • 3 Poems by Hannah Cajandig-Taylor
  • Issues
    • Issue 1
    • Issue 1.5: Hozier-inspired
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 3: Recovery
    • Issue 3.5: Lana Del Rey
    • Special Summer Solstice Prose Issue
    • Issue 4.1
    • Issue 4.2
    • Still Standing
What is Important Always Endures
                "Command me to be well" - Hozier
    
What to begin with, a twinge the magnitude
of its victim, aneurysm of anxieties fitted
with the heart's mechanism.
Beloved, I think I am a tree that parades grief
as a skin tone, each death I have witnessed
is a weed that smells of multiplication. 
Wilted greens, branches made resistant
to heaven's deluge. A shortness of breath is
how my body is recognizable as opposed
to the rest. Beloved, time is an animal
with a pace that brings upon my head
a hail of dust blended with disappointment. 
I believe that in the place of your palms
rests a basin of comfort & a pond to sail. 

Soliloquy
       "Offer me that deathless death" - Hozier

Today, I am to sweep the grave
of my grandfather, a monument ripe
with a dust storm's residue. Dead
for thirty five years, I flood the grave
with a sight heightened by this task.
I remove the sand, extract leaves
pale as the air that surround a ghost. 
To a man I never met, a family member
that idles in the throat of the earth, I
try not to overdo the prospect of my death.
Whether it'll be daylight unable to rustle
the sleep in my body, shards of glass
that open a catalogue of wounds
in my stomach or a violent tide of
ulcers that run my belly aground. 
I wish for an ending that will have
me outline nothing of sensation. 

Michael Akuchie, Igbo-Esan-born poet, has had poems appear in Dovecote, Anomaly, The Mantle, Inverse Journal, Glass, The Roadrunner Review & elsewhere. An Orison Anthology nominee and 2020 Roadrunner Poetry Prize Winner, he tweets @Michael_Akuchie. He is a final year undergrad in English & Literature at the University of Benin, Nigeria. 
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