A Night Fire Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In a bearded night that wove
and thatched night fronds
onto thick weaves
of night and deep caves of an eclipse,

an ebony hill sketched out
its curved spine,
trimmed and re-trimmed
its edges, lighting up steps
on the rocky staircase

to a landing pad to receive a smack
and a punch swelling
into the bloated hour of a night
in a cocked black glass bottle.

A young lady lay on
an abandoned sidewalk, her handbag
talking back to her.

A glittering, jingling handbag
from the spidery hands of a bully
still pouring out venom
and thorns of threats

on her, as she collapsed
into a lizard,
swallowed by her shadow of fright,

ants from the heat
crawling on her face and chest.
Wasps from the heat
also shot sharp pins into her thin skin.

(ii)

I was returning from a night shift
still shifting me out
of the curve that spun me back

to my straight line of a man
standing on a tall tree trunk.
On a tall elastic rock.
And even perched high on it crown.

Wearing the bully's claws to knock
him out of the collapsing slope
he'd taken, as he came close to lifting

a club on her, pulling out
from a sheathe what looked
like a knife to make the night to bleed.

(iii)

Unarmed, I burst out, a hilly fire,
from whose top
I broke out of my feathers
into a roaring bunch of fur:

"Young man, drop your knife,
or, I'll pull on my trigger
to blast you out of your life".

And the dinosaur of the night
swooped off a prey
like an eagle stabbed by arrows
melting its spine.