Prayer 

By Osahon Oka

                                Dust potted on bones.  

                                       That is how I got here,  

         Stalked here— intense growth  

                    Turned towards treetop halo— prayer    

                Angling into heaven’s vast ocular celebration.          

                                          Green is your restive colour  

                  Where butterflies brew their fever                                                          

                                            and swallows scatter their rave.   

                On devil grass, hunker and I have flattened,— lemon grass   

                Nosing abundance, green blade in wind tide— ready 

                                    To be flung wide open, my senses                                       

             Nudging the gladness, the beak   

                           This mockingbird is drinking from.                                      

I roll from that dactyl: flea black bagging the itch 

         So, skin would a tactile nest build,  

                                   Memory anchored to this moment.  

                     Grace sparkles at the bottom of this surrender.  

                                       For if I had not accepted death, the orphan            

                           To whom all my anxieties turn,  

                    Would I bear witness to this snaking bridge  

             Ants have made, mind tangled in one net,  

Or that frog tongue alighting from the gorge, licking 

     A queen veiled by a beauty wholly hers from her trek  

             Down the drooping neckline; a link in the lace?  

Yes, you wove the design into this labyrinth,                                                                                                        

        But what a weather you have built in here? 

                               So bejewelled, its richness robs me                                                                                                          

Of my simple idyl: my steel-glass utopia, 

         My papier-mâché friends huddled under neon signs,  

            Stirring long fingered cups, quiet  

                         Palms bobbing in fenced in lakes    

                               Where fabricated doves and swans   

            Their mechanized lives exhaust  

                              Sipping all these clockwork days.   

  You who hoed all this rich loam                                                                                                                                     

                           For all of us to germinate,  

                            Even gleaming pebbles palmed long by rain,                                                                                                                  

Make me green: soil unfurling from stem,  

                        Receding as your wild garden blooms.   

                                    My tame hungers reclaim.

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Pamilerin Jacob’s Remarks –

This poem's lyricism is unmatched by all others. Its surrealist logic is to be trusted. “Green is your restive colour” recalls Brooks’ “remember, green’s your color.” The poem neatly intersects the sublime without a defect in imagery. Its beauty surpasses its inadequacies. “Grace sparkles at the bottom of this surrender” is hard to forget.

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Anna Zgambo Remarks -

Brilliant! I am in love with “Prayer”, and I want to read more of the poet’s work. “Prayer” is a masterpiece.

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Commentary by Bridgette James

The poem opens with a depiction of human bones. I’m reminded of Adedayo Agarau’s poem, 'Arrival' in which he writes, My bones shake the fortitude of loss.  Is the protagonist in Osahon Oka’s piece skeletal remains? I assume the protagonist has  disassociated from his mortal remains and his spirit or soul  has probably ascended to Heaven. But I think his corpse remains buried. He has used prayer as a conduit to arrive in Heaven.

The world depicted is a fictitious celestial universe. It is one imagined by the poet entirely. We trust his image-rich phrases to illustrate scenes using multisensory language.

The colour green is employed symbolically. First mentioned in line 7, we are invited to see a universe awash with green plants. Birds frolic in this green space. The mention of lemon grass evokes the senses of smell and taste. I’m particularly fond of lemon grass tea. The presence of devil grass, what we call couch grass in the UK, connotes the abundance of fast-growing greenery. In England we say, lush green.

Is this world rich with life; however, is the poet dead? He asks the world to make him green in the end. He wants his soil to be unfurled or shaken out of his stem. Is he a corpse in the soil?

Other surreal characters are present in the body of the poem too, such as the queen and the paper mâché friends. I'm reminded of the Mexican Festival: 'Day of the Dead.' A whole story unfolds as the reader is immersed in this in spectacular piece.

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Professor David Manley in The Cambridge Introduction to creative Writing, 2007, wrote, ‘Every word in a poem is a tiny but essential part of the body and metabolism of that poem.’ Every word in Prayer functions.

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The protagonist performs an action that affects his environment every time we encounter him: I got here, I have flattened, I roll from that dactyl et cetera. The persona in the poem presents the poem’s most fundamental question in the middle of the piece as if we’re at the climax of the tale.

                                         ‘For if I had not accepted death, the orphan            

                           To whom all my anxieties turn,  

                    Will I bear witness to this snaking bridge  

             Ants have made…?’

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As in Adedayo Agarau’s poem, 'Arrival,' the poet in 'Prayer' talks about death.

We stay in one setting where a hype of activity occurs as in Adedayo Agarau’s poem, 'Arrival.' Osahon's submission was my favourite entry and so won $20 USD.