You can trace the swarm path
searching for a rationale all season long
if the longing persists —coquettes of ascension, juvenile
butterflies of the rolling years ― always with the grand fluttering of flimsy
afternoons & you with a heart rapid of lofty daydreams, childhood. Millions
of light years & still they reach us as winged,ultraviolet, radiates of small
careening galaxies, infinite notions of whimsy. Wanton celestials of perpetual
ruse & lift. Then, the invisible drag of a dark patch of native roses. The lush
lure of a greenery enflamed. Some forests vine with nectaries of sap, wax,
ruin, flowering with a sweetness that snares, forestalling the impulse to flight.
Jakky Bankong-Obi is from Kakwe-Beebo, a village on the corridors of the Cross River Rainforest in southeastern Nigeria. Her chapbook What Still Yields was chosen by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for publication in the New-Generation African Poets box sets, by Akashic Books and APBF (Spring/Summer 2022). Jakky is a Media Consultant and Co-Editor at Ice Floe Press, Poetry Editor at the Liberian magazine, Pepper Coast Literary and Co-curator at Poetry Sango Ota. Her work is forthcoming and in London Grip, The Kalahari Review, Reliquiae Journal (Corbel Stone Press), Pipewrench Magazine, Hobart Pulp, Gutter Magazine, The Poetry Review, Pidgeonholes and Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry etc. Her work considers the intersection of nature, landscape, myth, and otherworldly geographies as prism for identity and being. Jakky is on twitter as @jakkybeefive.
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