In Running On Waters, Nnabuife travers less traveled path

Author: Esther Chikodi Nnabuife
Title: Running on waters
Publisher: Red Letter crib signature
Genre: Poetry
Year: 2022
Reviewer: David Souzan

The genre of poetry is a less traveled path in literature and it takes a level of mastery of the art to foray this often avoided road. In Running on waters, Esther Chikodi Nnadozie shows up with simple evocations and renders her poems in a suitable form for easy reading and hysteria for her readers.

In this collection of poems, Esher holds no literary captives, as she goes from dirge to elegies and eulogies. She devotes her attention to everyday human affairs.

In the name of our father, Esther throws jabs at hypocrites and a slew of religious mongrels who do terrible things in the name of ‘our father’. She devotes her attention on a victim of abuse, who, probably, had to subject herself to such for economic gains. She berates the tongue in cheek devotion of some clerics to the tenets of the institution they are called to rever, protect and uphold.

In the poem, she writes:
Crossed hands,
fingers dipped in an avalanche of shame
bodies adjacent a mirror of shortcomings
legs hanging on the guard rails of superfluities
before his holiness thrusted his schlong in
her backside protrusion they both broke desire into fantasy;
drunken as they go long shallow and half way deep ;
then they thought of more distraught disciples
to be ferried and commissioned into the cave of ogres,
in the name or our father
Amen and Amen.

The line repeats the lucre of the shepherd for sexual aggrandisement and has a horde of unfortunate disciples who helps him recruit more distraught women seeking benevolence in exchange for lasviciousness.

Esther decries such posture for a hallowed institution. In the poem , Meeting Lucy, Esther writes:
Her aquiline nose shone like gold
under the yellow sun as
her scented body sway to the benevolence of the afternoon breeze,
her hands, acutely stretched,
as she bumped into bystanders to risk her luck for a meal a day
some shush her away while others are kind enough to gift her a dime,
Lucy had her smile nevertheless,
born of a blind father and a deaf mother,
Lucy had to grow up fast to meet their daily needs,
O poor Lucy with a belly full of sweet-sore stories.

Meeting Lucy explores the life of a girl that grew up ahead of her time. She never had the luxury of being a child. Life happened to her too early and found herself immersed in child labor. She had to fend for herself whilst she sought any means of livelihood, however, wherever, just to fill her longing. And her love to see her blind father and dead mother enjoy life beyond whatever hand fate dealt them made her ready for whatever life throws at her.

In the poem, The wedding, Esther narrates the ordeal of a bride who, having endured all the abuses of the groom, had to find a way of escape on her wedding day.

After a raucous night, her husband staggers to the event centre and repeats his abusive tendencies. The bride takes to her heels and the Danish wedding cake crumbles on the shimmering, finely cobbled floor. She writes thus:
The wedding
Behind my window,
the Danish decor sat in the distant playground,
I could see it by my window,
a hectare of land garrisoned by potsherds and lawns,
the bride lingered in her overflowing dress sandwiched by the wedding cake
before the groom lashed out,
high as a kite,
the cake fell off
a din followed
before the bride took to her heels,

What a shame that humans place shame on humans.

The collection of poems in Running on waters is a potpourri of mortal adventures.It is woven with the thread of nostalgia and catharsis.