Penned in Rage Literary Journal, Aug - Dec, 2025
 

1: EDITOR’S NOTE | August–December 2025 Edition 

Theme: We Were Not Meant to Die Here 

Sometimes, there are stories we inherit, and others we are courageously forced to carry. While some echo through silence, others are patterned enough to speak even in the midst of fire. This edition of Penned in Rage is able to gather those voices together with their beauty: amazing works shaped not only by the force of anger and grief, but also by the stubborn endurance of those who have vowed to let their voices be heard. Whether through verse, narrative, or meditative reflection, the contributors summon a shared language that moves through broken systems and fractured selves, each boldly reaching deeper for something so startlingly honest. 

To write in times like these is not only to tell, but also to name, to imagine, and to remain despite the sorrows. It is to assert presence, to stake claim to memory, and to resist dehumanization. The poets and storytellers in these pages understand that language is never neutral but can serve as an instrument of both redemption and remembrance. Their work maps a world where justice often arrives too late, where vulnerability sharpens under neglect, and where the body personal or communal—carries both memories as resistance. Yet within this terrain of pain and persistence, there is also an artistry that refuses to let go of clarity, dignity, or care. 

Terry’s poem, “If You Can Carry Light,” distils this spirit of resilience in a stirring call: “If you can meet each dawn’s first light / as men meet kings, unbent, unshaken— / while every cell screams run — / and still hold the Earth…” 

This voice—unbowed by hardship and steeped in hope carries the essence of what it means to endure and forge light in darkness. 

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The theme We Were Not Meant to Die Here is not just a lament, but a vision—a profound recognition that even in spaces marked by betrayal, silence, or abandonment, something essential still survives. And that even that survival itself is not a passive act, but a kind of glory, shaped in repetition—word by word, breath by breath by those who have refused to surrender to death. 

Penned in Rage lives at the intersection of protest and craft—in the aching labour of rethinking language, gathering fractured truths, and rebuilding narratives where silence once had its fullest chances. Every poem, story, and hybrid piece in this third issue continues that work of wonder— on the slow, burning immortality of hope, by reminding us that literature, at its fiercest, does not only simply offer escape from reality, but deepens our encounter with it too. 

For this third edition, we invite you to read slowly, to listen between the lines, and to feel how each work carefully leans toward justice—and how, even in the centre of disillusionment, each of the pieces does not retreat into despair, but rises again and again beyond the blinding gates of every tragedy and darkness. 

Onyishi Chukwuebuka Freedom 
Editor, Penned in Rage 
August–December 2025 Edition 

If you can meet each dawn’s first light 

as men meet kings, unbent, unshaken -

while every cell screams run -

and still hold the Earth 

though its throne lies broken 

If you can laugh when plans collapse 

and dance when doors are slammed and bolted 

wear your losses like leather straps 

on boots that keep moving 

scuffed, scarred, but never still 

If you can laugh where others bleed 

and spin gold from this country’s chaos 

turn every No into yam seed 

and plant it where others see only dust 

If you can smile through unpaid dues 

sip your Garri like it’s rare bourbon 

win even while losing 

and still raise your head 

true African born 

then you have learnt what they never dared to teach you 

how to walk through fire and still carry light 

You’re my first love— 

Punchline of my aubade. 

Your scent, the perfume 

That littered my senses 

Your sun soothed the soul of forest 

Your valley stretched forth arms 

And cradled my infant head 

Your mountains shouldered my thoughts. 

An hour at your feet, 

Wombs bloomed, quivers filled 

Goats kidded, pigs farrowed 

Dogs whelped, cows calved 

No arching back, no tilting hips. 

Bullets of greed have now splintered your mirror, 

A map for migrants on the wheel of trauma 

The gods have lost their songs on the altar of lust 

The priests too have lost their voices,  

Squeaking through parched throats. 

This place I call home is a memory of lost lovers 

Found on the harsh arm of time 

In the traffic of tariffs  

Where dreams are watered by nightmares. 

Here, the choice to live or die is a gamble— 

A die thrown by a blind man 

Who leads the crippled to the beautiful gate. 

If at all, she can see,

Google needs medicated glasses

Washed with bleach and snows.

Before her very sight,

They peddle young Eve(s)

From one axis to different spatial,

Caged in meagre mangers

Where sex predators pay homage

In patronage and patriotism.

Where are the satellite?

The orbiters,

Patrolling my social space,

Joggle back with violations popping messages

On my feed,

When I say a thing,

Where are they?

Stalkers,

Monitoring spirits.

And how these traffickers eat

Their own hearts, kidneys, livers

And intestines out.

Having no human left

To think about the grave agony

Of thousands of mothers.

I hardly know.

Parents look out billion miles

Without seeing the footprints of their once windless angels,

Sliding down the staircase to staunch slumber.

Regrets are written on the platter of our hearts,

I hope yours are not engraved with titanium,

It will be forever there,

Even the grave cannot erase them.

It is a charcoal world out here

And the holy ones rarely get a corner.

Sorry,

Sorry,

My inability is hurting me the more

And writing this epistle increases the pain.

I used to have a dog, a local breed with a brown colour 

but it had a dark face like a Rottweiler 

with a white spot on its nose 

it went after the flock of sheep taken home from pasture 

fawning after the shepherd as a guard from the rear 

at the flection of any anomalous person 

it would twine and sniff behind the culprit 

after goings-on in the morning 

it would dig at the soil under the water tap 

having dug out the ground, roused 

it would lie there, gaze -

just as the beast would dispatch, men judge 

until the wayfarers make the highways tense 

dealing treacherously with bogglers 

like the burning of lime, digging the underpinning of Sharon 

with quirks, swirls, phylacteries, tassels of their garment 

we could not cover our eyes from bloodshed 

gory pictures of butchered, charred bodies 

I used to abide securely as the munitions of rock 

ruminated on terror from the tower 

like rivers and streams recur to the fountainhead 

a shaking of the head we were among the nations 

and the people declined to gird their swords upon their thighs 

when the madness of rulers appears in vaticination 

the prodigy wins as others gape 

a man deep in speech, for their nefariousness 

cast him in the dungeon with dudgeon 

the stakes are removed, cords are broken 

I used to contend with thieves 

take sides with adulterers 

like a giraffe kicking the calf 

I received a mark – an identity 

So has been the groan of the heart.  

Her lover’s heart was an empty shell  

Where she poured her soul for solace. 

Ashes and gore cradled her sweet limbs  

From the pain her lover bestowed. 

Yet, her tangled legs entrapped her in muffled linens—  

Oxytocin glazed her heart with desires for comfort. 

Disoriented, reasoning became her soul’s sworn enemy 

When her brute lover’s gentle touch awakened dopamine’s rush. 

Freezing and melting, her heart yearned for love, 

Seeking honeyed broth to palliate her inflamed senses. 

Suffering must be the path to sweetness— she believed. 

Pain is not a hard tunnel to traverse— she thought. 

Then one night, she heard soulful harmonies  

From an angel sitting beside her on her bed.  

Then the next minute, it was all a dream. 

She woke up with the voice of remorse in her head,  

Saying, I told you so, for her raging hormones,  

Searching for answers to the questions in her body. 

For all the answers she got from the wrong hands, 

Glimmers of light appeared at her bedpost 

To wipe her tear-laced eyes in the morning. 

This light beamed the angel’s silhouette 

As the dew of joy landed on her ailing heart, 

Tending to the blisters on her traumatized brain. 

While soft grins zinged through her veins, 

The angel drew a curve of smiles on her face, 

And redeemed her with comic relief,  

Till the amusement washed the umbra off her eyes. 

Hours had passed as she tended to her room— 

Her memento of healing from her heart’s undoing. 

She set the rumpled bed and dusted the window 

That welcomed the radiant light on her skin and hair.  

That morning could have been perpetual horror  

Decorated with her toxic lover’s portraits. 

Pain could have tainted her white walls, while fear 

Could have swirled in her eyes, engulfing her heart.  

But the angel hurried in with the light’s compassion, 

Illuminating her nightmarish path through the dream  

To usher her awake into a new dawn—  

A new home for her to find rebirth through peace.  

heaviness heaps its weight in a pile.  

hatred burns to plaster onto tongues. 

within the pits of our souls, we want to  

cool down from this fire, but the  

weather outside scorches our skin.  

we are trying to hold it together,  

not hang on a hook like our black  

ancestors were hung on trees, except 

this time, black female teenagers  

destroyed their own kind. offenses  

often happen. our journey is brief, a  

blink of an eye, a moment we will miss,  

if we seek revenge. exchange the grime  

for grace, take the tears, the challenges 

to teach compassion as ice cream, so  

we can live with a sweet taste instead of  

wounds licked up off the ground. good is  

the genuine touch we carry, buckets filled 

with water for those who need peace,  

who are searching for rest. when the weary 

have heart and not hate inside, the world will 

heal. hope compels restoration to come.  

On Sundays, I wore dresses like armour. 

Stiff lace at my throat, 

tight shoes biting at my heels. 

The mirror told me I was holy. 

My reflection whispered: pretend. 

In church, we clapped and sang praises, 

voices raised like burnt offerings. 

But no one heard the silence in my chest, 

the hymns that choked on the word sin. 

Every hallelujah bruised my body. 

Every sermon sutured shame into my skin. 

Desire became a demon 

I was forced to cast out, 

even as it knelt beside me, 

begging to be known. 

I learned to smile with my mouth shut, 

to kneel with my fists clenched, 

to pray for erasure  

and call it purity. 

Now, I write the truth in lowercase. 

No more pulpits. 

No more masks. 

Only the raw gospel of being real. 

(for Natasha) 

Federal High Court in Abuja has nullified the suspension of Kogi State Senator , Natasha Akpoti Uduaghan and ordered the senate to recall her. 

Sahara Reporters July 4, 2025. 

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aerodyne of glee wafts  me                                                     to heaven’s gate. 

                                                  at the feet of Divinity 

i place garlands                                                                            of extolment,                          put my tongue in the mouth  

of God & pour grins                      into his belly                     

            only light can regurgitate  the thing engulfed by darkness               this thing that had remained in the nub of                                                       skank till we embraced 

this    premise :         our judiciary has morphed into                                unclean shit 

 when we look at what ought to collect us                              from the teeth of shark 

 but see how leviathans  continue to pull it into the lips of  

                                                                                                           parazonium  

we calligraph this postulation                                 on the faces of our bleeding hearts: 

                  Justice has found home in the lungs of thieves  

   lion-teethed anacondas stripped a woman naked                         & when she  swims into             the throat of  Phoneutria               to  redeem her broken self 

                                 we pour our hearts into grief 

  our irises birthing                       smoked-rimmed                                       waters of disillusionment . 

                              corrupt mouth only has dead bodies to vomit 

while she curls            & whirls  in the                                                   foyer of justice 

                                                                we expect  

the graveyard to return  a disfigured tongue to her constituents 

but                    what   we  baptized rotten maggots     

                                                                                    wore our senator  

                       a gold-rimmed regalia  

                                                              & place these lines in her tongue 

Judiciary is not dead, it is & will remain the sentinel of the just. 

i place garlands                                                                            of extolment 

at the feet of Divinity 

              only light can regurgitate  the thing engulfed by darkness