Poem
Kayo Chingonyi
Offering[s]
Offering[s]
Offering[s]
Our penance is measuredin mornings made to wait;
furrowed brows bathed in
relief bleeding from pores.
In this dance of coloured light
and pitch, lit wicks, set back
in sweat-flecked faces, flicker
with pleasure and pain, near-buckled
knees carry us to the crest of each
sonic wave this tune is sick someone
and everyone says, breath held before
the bass drops like a cliff-top-melancholic
resigned to rocks. We deify beats now,
bent in penitence, arms outstretched
in this holy of holies, where all is a rush
to find space to make our offering[s].
© 2011, Kayo Chingonyi
Published with kind permission of the author.
Kayo Chingonyi
(Zambia, 1987)
With powerful nuance and great emotional depth, Kayo Chingonyi’s poems are informed by an enthusiasm for music as well as literature. A fellow of The Complete Works programme for diversity and quality in British Poetry, he was awarded the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2012, was the Associate Poet at the Institute of Contemporary Arts from Autumn 2015 to Spring 2016 and has held many residencies inc...
Poems
Poems of Kayo Chingonyi
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Offering[s]
Our penance is measuredin mornings made to wait;
furrowed brows bathed in
relief bleeding from pores.
In this dance of coloured light
and pitch, lit wicks, set back
in sweat-flecked faces, flicker
with pleasure and pain, near-buckled
knees carry us to the crest of each
sonic wave this tune is sick someone
and everyone says, breath held before
the bass drops like a cliff-top-melancholic
resigned to rocks. We deify beats now,
bent in penitence, arms outstretched
in this holy of holies, where all is a rush
to find space to make our offering[s].
Offering[s]
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