Untitled (Tan-Renga) Poems

Poetry by Uchechukwu Onyedikam & Christina Chin

deep night 

fills this lonely space

bright moonlight

yet none to warm 

my hands with

spider web

across my face

she passes

the soup 

instead of water 

a mud hut

of red earth

the boy homed 

a flock of landing 

mallards

mourners observe

all the prayers

unsaid

the high priest 

leads the rituals 

old neighborhood

no more childhood mates

plum blossoms

sweetens ageing

memories 

Uchechukwu Onyedikam is a Nigerian creative artist based in Lagos, Nigeria.  His poems have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Brittle Paper, Poetic Africa, Hood Communists and in print anthologies.  Christina Chin and he have co-published Pouring Light on the Hills (2022).

Christina Chin is a painter and haiku poet from Malaysia. She is a four-time recipient of top 100 in the mDAC Summit Contests, exhibited at the Palo Alto Art Center, California.  She is 1st prize winner of the 34th Annual Cherry Blossom Sakura Festival 2020 Haiku Contest and 1st prize winner in the 8th Setouchi Matsuyama 2019 Photohaiku Contest.  She has been published in numerous journals, multilingual journals, and anthologies, including Japan's prestigious monthly Haikukai Magazine.