the guns are hungry

Joseph C.P. Christopher

The guns are hungry. The bullets
are ripe for discharge. I’m afraid

they will disguise the skin and feed
from it to satisfaction. I have seen

them separate infant’s torsos and turned
them into meat for hogs. I have seen

them strip mothers of well-being, and
left them incurable and alone. I have seen

them alchemize younglings into blood
appetizing monsters, holding virgil

in the dark to knock every man
out with the dab of their paw. I have

seen them scourge nations into fragments, where the displaced carry with them

pendants of disordered psychic that remind them of the nubbin of existence.

Does it matter how fattened they get or how much blood they draw from the

vein of the sea? They pound the fields for flesh, for tragedies that peck the sky with

bullets. They are becoming brutal beyond the reaches of shimmering

roads in the heat. While we sleep on rust, we are guilty of these crimes; we inhibit an

acceptance of suffering as a courtesy of love and are thereafter honored with

open crypts burrowed by worms. Ours
is a tragic domain of guns. They are getting

hungrier, their fire hurts.

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Joseph C.P. Christopher is a poet. He is the author of Salient Whispers (2014) which was shortlisted for ANA/Chevron award for poetry in 2014 and his newest collection is titled Dust in the Rain (2020). His works feature in Praxis Magazine, Lunaris, Ample Remains and elsewhere. He is currently a doctoral candidate with Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. He lives in Abuja.

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