Liturgies & Other Poems – Adesiyan Oluwapelumi

Gethsemane

In the garden of prayer, where perspiration fell heavy as blood and faint knees sank into the earth, I was the mustard seed of want, sown in the golden hour of spring. At every canonical hour, I watered the grove and weeded the tares. The ground opened with coral lips like a wound waiting to be kissed. Callused roots. Calcified stems. Cashew nuts ripened with an onyx crown. Alabaster finches on olive trees. All harmonised in a ceremony of rain and sunshine. Once, I placed my hoe over a ridge and dredged a dam. The strait gushed out as oil from a broken earthenware, overflowing and running over. I prayed for a refilling of the decanter from which glory spilt. An overturn. But God refused to reimburse the spent goodness. And soon, the wellsprings became parched. The fruits rotted from the inside. The tares grew and spilt their spores over the garden. O what is the cost of overturned grace? I offer my weariness as a rotten-sweet incense to heaven, praying for a watering of the ground from which joy once oozed.

Specimen

What to make of a scion-hewed want
grafted into the heartwood of a tree
infertile in the vocation of seed-bearing?
This is the ludicrousness of faith.
How the light enters as a droplet
and leaves as a river.
Beloved, I have been a witness
to the theophany of our birthing.
Imagine a nebulous cloud of fluorescent lights,
a wild constellation in the cosmos,
unstifled and spontaneous.
There is no hyperbole
to the inscrutable measure of our ignorance.
For all belief is obtuse.
And all religion is specimen.
Once, I, too, arrived at the riverbank of doubt
seeking the mollusk shell of evidence.
Because there are no rivers without a shore,
I walked out of the land into the river
with feet yoked as antlers
upon its silver surface.
It is true, no one knows the road
that leads to God.
All pave their paths in the skin
of a familiar, receding light.
Because it is more difficult to doubt,
than to believe.

Songbird

There is no remedy for a songbird with a severed beak.
Do not attempt to offer any sacrifices or perform any
rites for a tongue slit into two half moons incapable
of holding a full language? You must understand that
everything is engineered with the desire to sing but not
everything is capable of singing. What do we call a
magpie that stammers? Or a cricket born with cleft lips?
Believe me, there are brightest things inside us trapped
in darkest places behind hinged doors. Listen, the body,
like everything, is a verb, yearning for translation —
to become a metaphor for dance. Like the injured antelope,
struck by an arrow lying in a forest of lilies. The supine
boar in the butchershop. Or the passerine on the roof
scorched by lightning. But the wish of a thing to move
does not make it capable of motion. Lord, I know every-
thing has a mouth and if allowed will sing. Including
dried bones. But what happens when all the music go
to a place where nothing capable of sound can speak? Cold as
wood, the song of the cricket’s lips is stitched with seam.
There is a hummingbird atop a tree of mangoes attempting
to unknot the spool of black wool cushioned in its chest.
It is true, Lord, the blessed never wishes to become a past
tense for miracle. Bless my lips with a psalm that I may
never know the deadness of throat or barrenness of joy.

Bible

Open.
And in a barn,
we read scriptures
of our skins to another.
She offers god
and I offer prayer.
Her body, the church.
I, nun, come chaste with ink.
Reed. I dissolve into her
like ordinance into prayer.
I who seek devotion.
To hold something in my
hands like water.
Beloved, my mouth is a font
I cannot read.
Will you translate?

Liturgies

i.

He touches their wounds and they are no longer wounds
but passageways for the entrance of light. Amen.

I touch their wounds and they are no longer wounds
but passageways for the entrance of light. Amen.

ii. 

Before the floodgates, the vessel is prepared
to hold the drizzle. The dark inside of the animal,
bloated like cold wood, is irrigated with floodlight.

First, the interstice smeared immaculate by Christ’s kiss.
Next, the Eucharist — the breaking of bread and wine,
to commemorate the communion of spirits. Take, 

eat and drink. This is my flesh and blood,
poured out for you in testament of the new covenant.

 iii.

In the cavity of His hands where the nail bore, they thrust
their fingers and their doubt was filled with light. Amen.

In the cavity of my hands where the nail bore, they thrust
their fingers and their doubt was filled with light. Amen.

 iv.

He prepares a panacea from a mould of mud and saltwater 
and apply to their blind eyes and they see the light. Amen.

I prepare a panacea from a mould of mud and saltwater 
and apply to their blind eyes and they see the light. Amen.

 v.

At the touch of the fringes of His garment, the abscess
shrivels out of their bodies, like rotting grapefruit. Amen.

At the touch of the fringes of His garment, the abscess
shrivels out of their bodies, like rotting grapefruit. Amen.

 vi.

At Horeb, the burning bush sermonises the air
with a rosewood-fragrant spice, petrichor
of God’s arrival after a long, dry spell.

vii. 

A soft-fleeced monarch
dances to the unsung elegy of a drum. 

                                                            It is a new season. 
A country of peonies cruise the sky
with their testimony
of newness. Stones are making their own songs.

Adesiyan Oluwapelumi, TPC XI, is a medical student, poet, essayist & Poetry Editor of Fiery Scribe Review from Nigeria. An Unserious Collective, Adroit Journal Summer Program, HUES Foundation & SprinNG Writers’ Fellow, his works are featured in The Republic, Electric Literature, 20.35 Africa, Poet Lore & elsewhere.

*Image by Aaron Burden on Unsplash