May 2026 Poetry Contest Winner

Biafra war: 1967-70 For the man; for every beggar at Upper Iweka

Biafra war: 1967-70For the man; for every beggar at Upper Iweka

The man on the sidewalk drags himself along the tar hands steady on a lute dust on his shorts. All around there are passersby smooth & stampeding the soft yellowness of city light. It takes a casual look to see the cut beneath his knees. His femurs split hollowed out like poplars hacked from stem. From our school bus we waved at him, out of pity I’d say, or maybe awe — as if his body, disheveled, begins to glow. Kids that we were how we bowed at the first sign of light: brushfire ash fireflies Pascal candles at St. Peter’s Church & to this man softening the air with his lute. It’s August of that year. I remember the silence heavy as lead & then my buddy Ken curious as ever, asked what did I think chopped off those legs? As if at 14 I knew anything about the war; about those villages raided & charred. About the bombs & each maimed kid. We sat in the school bus, waving & watching as he waved back excitedly intensified before returning to the lute. As if to say, See I survived. In Bio class, back at school, I could barely pay attention to my teacher going on & on about Charles Darwin. What in the name of fruit flies was I thinking what drosophila what encounter had all that science justified? In one place, Alaskan wood frog freezes its body to survive the winter. In another a kangaroo, deprived of water, hydrates on desert seeds. In yet another, this man flourishes on two chopped feet holds a lute like something bright. How— running out of time— he lived as though capable of blooming of suspending time. His body an hourglass. The sands inexhaustible unending.