Playing Crosswords by Chukwu Emmanuel

Playing Crosswords

You think you can solve this country.

Go ahead — circle it with your thumb,

like a penny you can throw at

a fast‑moving car. You get

a territory of clues: earthy smell,

a people who spoke in tongues,

pretended to be saved, then watched

whoever came to them limping, acting a fool.

Notice the arm cocked back,

released, released, released.

Then look at your hands —

fifteen years of fists raised in salute,

then revolution. How do you like being

in this country’s open‑assed robe,

black dots on its cotton? Now start over.

Solve the sharp laughter of your own kin.

Solve what you’re in for with a raised finger.

It’s cold outside. See who walks out alive

with salt, mucus, plain old water.

Grab some coal, some leaves the colour

of crusty blood and a bird’s thigh bones —

see what the body can become

if we try honesty. A new town,

a different name. Now finish the puzzle.

The answer was always

a penny through glass.

Chukwu Emmanuel is a poet concerned with the grammar of manhood: how it is performed, inherited, survived, and rewritten. His work examines masculinity not as an identity but as an ongoing negotiation between violence and mercy, privacy and confession, the father’s hands and the son’s mouth. His works have been finalists for Kalahari Review Igby Prize for Nonfiction and Kreative Diadem contest.