Longlisted Poem: “Dirges of the Scorched Earth” and Other Poems
CHRIS MONDAY ANYIGOR is a Nigerian poet, educator, and literary administrator from Ekwetekwe in Ezza North Local Government Area of Ebonyi State. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education (English) from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He currently serves as the Principal of PHD Secondary School, Obinze, Imo State. CHRIS was shortlisted for the 2025 African Writers Awards and received honourable mention at the 2015 United Nations Day Creative Writing Celebration.He has two forthcoming collections: Hosanna of the Massesand Other Poems and The Pillar.
Blood at the Gate: Elegy for Ezza Effium
Father came naked, bleeding dust –
The heavens roared, the earth was crushed.
No boots, no shield, no sword, no song –
Just battered feet and sorrow’s wrong.
Spears kissed his lips, tore through his palms;
He bowed before Uzu’s sacred thorn.
At Aliobu’s shrines, he loosed his cry,
A wail that tore the heart of sky.
His voice: Agbara’s bitter breath,
A covenant carved with blades of death.
At Obasi’s shrine, where cobras feast,
Father knelt –a broken priest.
Under a sky of boiling dreams,
He bathed in Grandmother’s bitter streams.
Roots fumed in clay, wild herbs seared deed,
Garlics stung sweat, grief bled and spread.
He kissed the earth, he swore an oath:
“These cobras, hyenas, vultures both –
Shall crumble like okra in my fist,
And rot within the blood-red mist.”
At dawn, the hawk’s iron claws unfurled –
It snatched Mother’s chick and fled the world.
Father watched the thieving sky;
The hawk returned beneath his cry.
Gunfire gnawed through man and beast,
Plague coiled like rot in broken veins.
Bedbugs feasted on human remains,
Power grinned while hope was seized.
Ezza Effium weeps –
Through pyramid stones, through shattered streets.
Her trees are skeletons in moaning winds;
Her children drown where hope grows thin.
Playgrounds sink in seas of tears,
Flooded by a thousand years.
Father rose with bleeding brand –
A sword of blood, not made by hand.
Behind the Red Sea’s choking flood,
He struck the cobras, spilled their blood –
The beasts who bit his flesh and name,
Who carved our souls with fang and flame.
Asphalt Prayers
At Douglas Street, where shadows crawl,
Beneath the breath of ancient St. Paul,
The cries of the weary rise like flame –
Each voice a burden, each face a name.
They kneel upon the asphalt’s skin,
Side by side, with sorrow pinned.
Along this road, they forge their bed,
Where tires spit doom, and future bled.
Despair wears hunger like a vest,
Ribs press forward from hollowed chest.
Homeless hearts in silent fray,
Camped at the gates where angels stray.
Nature gives in ruthless grace –
Rain anoints each hollowed face.
Sunbeams strike like tempered blades,
Scorching sores where hope decays.
The harmattan, with phantom breath,
Chills the bones in whispered death.
The street parades its passerby –
Eyes that feed, yet never ask why.
The ‘big men’ glide in armored pride,
Tinted truths where secrets hide.
Their tires hum psalms of disregard,
As children dream on broken yard.
A few frail hands extend, then fade,
Dissolving like dew in morning shade.
The watchers moan through lips of stone,
As justice limps –flesh turned to bone.
Dirges of the Scorched Earth
Rubbish heaps line the weary street –
They hum low dirges in the heat,
While every breath the city takes
Is laced with smoke that makes the lungs ache.
The bushes blaze in orange tongues,
Their ashes rise where prayers once hung.
Above, the eagles twist and glide,
Like sirens in the sulfur tide –
They flirt with flame, they soar in dread,
Dark heralds of a world half-dead.
The bulldozers descend like gods,
Ripping roots with iron rods.
Their joyless cries –a metal moan –
Uproot the shade, reduce the known.
Ogoni weeps in poisoned rain,
Obo’s breath is thick with pain.
Her children choke on unseen smears –
COPD, PAHs, and fears.
The oil, black blood, spills out and dried,
A stain where mangrove beauty dies.
The rivers whisper what they saw –
Finned corpses bloated in the draw.
The brine remembers every hand
That choked the life from sea and land.
The trees stood mute. The waters screamed.
But no one came. No saviors dreamed.
Rubies clinked in foreign vaults –
Bought with flesh and battered faults.
What price is paid in fame and gold
When home is lost and hearts grow cold?
They stab the earth –“She will forgive,”
They said. And still, she lets us live.
But what triumph can be found
In grinding Eden to the ground?
She held us once –her breath, our bread.
We plunder now, soon, we’ll be dead.