Nnadi Samuel holds a B.A in English & literature from the University of Benin. Author of Nature knows a little about Slave Trade (Sundress Publication, 2023). His works have been previously published/are forthcoming in Foglifter, Carte Blanche, Beestung Magazine, ALOCASIA, Fifth Wheel Press, Common Wealth Writers & elsewhere. Winner of the Penrose Poetry Prize 2021 (LGBTQA+). He tweets @Samuelsamba10.

ellipsis for my feminine body

nnadi samuel

Praise for your loin that sparks a controversy. relic of skin,
ligament & bone-soft flesh: all the terror to mourn you.

yet, your pubescence: the way each strand devours space,
spreading voracious across a lap.

here, the loin demands safety. demands way beyond
being well trimmed & prim-proper, demand ways to defy
this biological make-up—afflicting the gap in between my hip.

how the bush beneath, misgender my youthfulness.

I hold a church’s pamphlet, & the sermon translates pubescence
as disaster overrunning a girl's body.

I confess to the damage, to shortchanging myself in measuring up
to this worth, by planting a scissor to each armpit.

& in the next week, I am skin-thorny as a porcupine.
all starched hair & razored meat—swording out of my loin.
a sacrilege, wielded in defence of whoever raised me.

I am volatile: head to toe.
I recall the teenager at New Jersey who,
in a bid to outdress his age—skin his bones alive.
flesh, hanging from kneecap.

& in the same breath, I surround a bathtub with a paring knife,
beheading each bushy part.

the pamphlet says: ‘razoring the body is a penance for harlot.’
but, isn’t our loin a temple of God & other smaller things?

beloved, I wish you a stress-free shave.
I implore, you experiment more on washcloth doused
in coconut oil—as often as you bleed.