Seven of Pentacles (Reversed)

Riddle of the 7 Crossroads
by Soonest Nathaniel

Between clause & phrase, a sentence loses its period.
The signature of human speech gets distorted. The road
is left famished as milk dries up in the bosom of a lactating earth.

Between memory & interpretation, a woman weeps;
the teen girl with horror in her body stops looking at the mirror.
No boy ever dares come close to a maiden already married off
to the god of prime numbers.

Between curiosity & lust, the white pawn moves
forward one square, two squares, in a bid to outwalk the furthest city light.
She captures to the left, captures to the right, to escape a death in the sun,
bait for a ruthless hunt in the night of the Askari.

Between symbol & allegory, the banshee cries.
The land is desecrated. The king looks inside the crown
as his corpse is taken to the funeral ground.
There, they will wash his body with the tears of widows;
they will circle his grave with chalk and dog’s blood.

Between daylight & pain, the virgin, pregnant with beatitudes
must inform the earth of an impending drought. She will go pleading,
walking down the lane with a basket full of premature plantains.

Between the shadow & the soul, the chosen bride
seeks passage through the eyeless needle. On her lips a prayer, volatile as ether.
She feeds her lust into the fire; the flames lick her bones,
feasting on the fat of her deepest fears.

Between mirth & motivation, the casualties of mathematics
compute an eternity of chaos. Manila offered at the foot of the fig.
The unprecedented is like meat in a nation’s broth;
let the desecrated and the shamed freely feast.

Soonest Nathaniel (he/him) is a poet and spoken word artist. He is the author of Teaching My Father How To Impregnate Women, selected as winner of the 2017 RL Poetry Award. He was Poet Laureate for the 2014 Korea Nigeria Poetry Festival. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Rattle, Silver Blade, The Pedestal Magazine, FIYAH, Silver Blade Poetry, Northridge Review, Praxis Mag, Raven Chronicles, Saraba, Loudthotz, Northridge Review, Reverbnation, Elsewhere, Scintilla, Erbacce UK, Kalahari Review, Sentinel Nigeria, and many more.