Dining Rules by Nnadi Samuel

Our thatched roof wears its silence in the style of a mohawk.

I bend to the barbing & let the style eat me up to my sleeves.

you become a daddy’s boy here, by being loud as a tablecloth—

rinsed off its design: a presence that is no presence.

the way he arranges the countertop before a meal.

I owe my stain to all of his red decisions with oil,

how he blunders through the moment of our raised heads:

a spill where a spoon should be. a trembling that is his signature.

the more his hand reaches for a bowl, the more oil stutters on the white of me.

God looks down, cracks a rib on our ceiling & calls it lightning.

when Ma sees the reproach, she replaces the bowl with a brawl—screaming to the high heavens.

I cherish my mother’s angst when it is voiceless.

I lay down in senseless tense, debating my use outside of the context of a dining,

came up with a theory as ingenious:

I am absorbing a sound that is a rarity.

the thin line between me & the silverware—a clatter spanked in soft commotion.

I carry this cutlery of speech into language & people question the loud rattling noise

coming from a hard object like me, as I strike my teeth together in rushed percussion.

I cherish my angst when it is voiced:

as if a small breath, passed through the underneath of my inner lining.

I am rag in wasteful embroidery. I undress a table in one shift.

the length of my speaking is the amount of glass broken on the floor,

incoherent to piece back into what can stay on a rack

& still make a meaning that is non-plastic.

someone beholds the shard of my voice, calls it accident

& blood gushes from their place of hearing.

I am what shouldn’t be listened to twice in rough succession.

in a dialect, a tribe name their babies by throwing a salver down the stairs

& filtering the sound to suit a modern calling.

I am chaos in that manner, casualty to be owned by a body.

ask my parents, how they christen a boy ‘Iwu-ajo-ku’

& expect the crashing syllable to unify him.

when I crack open to perform utterance,

you’d need a broom & dustpan to pack an explanation from the wreckage.

here, is my remedy in guise of table manners: that, I don’t talk while eating.

that, I restrain from parting my jaws if it’s not an emergency:

like, breathing from all doors of my five senses.

that, I chew the cud of language with my mouth sealed.

that, I wait on strangers to host me to a discuss.

that, I use a napkin, lest I spill a vowel on my torso.

that, I remain on the table till I am excused from adding color to a room.

that, the decorum I loathe is a decor someone out there is bargaining for.

I douse my imperfection with water & it takes on a fresh look.

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NNADI SAMUEL holds a B.A in English & literature from the University of Benin. Author of 'Nature knows a little about Slave Trade' selected by Tate.N.Oquendo (Sundress Publication, 2023). His works have been previously published/forthcoming in Common Wealth Writers, Foglifter, Carte Blanche & elsewhere. A 3x Best of the Net, and 8× Pushcart Nominee. Winner of the Penrose Poetry Prize 2021(LGBTQA+), 2022 Angela C Mankiewicz Poetry Contest, the River Heron Editor's Prize 2022, the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Annual Award, 2022(Texas Christian University), Bronze prize for the Creative Future Writer's Award 2022, UK London, the Virginia Tech Center for Refugee, Migrants & Displacement Studies Annual Award, 2023, the 2023 Stacy Doris Memorial Award(Fourteen Hills) San Francisco State University Review, the John Newlove Poetry Annual Awards(Ottawa, Canada), 2023 and the Vera Manuel Poetry Awards, 2023 Surrey Muse Art Society(Vancouver, Canada). His third micro-chapbook "Biblical Invasion, BC" is published @Bywords Publication (Ottawa CA) in 2024. He tweets @Samuelsamba10. 

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