SCHOOL DAY
ALM No.91, July 2026
POETRY
School Day
The room was full.
Chalk on the board, names on the roll,
the usual scratch of pens.
Outside, the yard was wet.
My father’s coffin lay on the floor
Dressed in a black suit.
My brother was two doors down.
We didn’t look at each other.
We agreed not to.
Mother knelt beside him
Dressed in a black veil.
Her tears soaked the earth.
At school, the corridor was long.
Every door we passed was closed.
Every voice inside was speaking
about something that wasn’t this.
Later, the house was different.
The kettle boiled, no one drank.
The coat on the chair gathered dust.
We changed schools after that.
New bell. New desks. New names.
The old ones didn’t fit anymore.
Caged
Three rats of strange colours
lived in a cage
that wasn’t theirs.
A cobra crawled in-between
Tussling for power,
loosed cords.
The gong of war echoed
across the rivers and valleys
Shores of Biafra.
Two rats joined hands.
The other carried boxes and sacks
Across a corner of the metal cage.
A woman sat on the ground, back to the wall
made of sacks and corrugated tin.
The child on her laps was light as a bird.
Soldiers dropped the bombs
Piece by piece
on the red earth.
But he did not cry.
His eyes are too big for his face,
fixed on something past the fence.
She hummed low, a tune from before.
The note broke. She started again.
Her hands did not shake.
Outside, a truck started.
No one ran.
Tired of running.
She pulled his blanket tighter,
though it was thin,
though the sun was already high.
Epitaph for the Vanished
They gathered the iron at dusk,
measured it in handfuls of ash.
Shared it like a sacrament
among the chosen mongrels
who spoke in slogans
and read the sky with broken eyes.
The drums were silent.
Not from peace—
from severed sinew.
You spoke of the people,
but the people had gone
into the mouth of the river,
carried under by names
that would not be spoken again.
I saw the child’s sandal
nailed to the gate of the market.
I saw the teacher’s chalk
write silence on the board.
A skeleton flower with white,
delicate petals turns crystal-clear,
when touched by the rain.
Turns white again when dried.
But the serpent that ate a dove
Had no name.
The author, Joseph Marcel, Ikhenoba is a Biochemist by profession and a passionate writer. He has published several poems, articles and stories which have been published in Amazon, Poetry South, Active Muse, Short story.net, Poem Hunters, Core Humanity Commons, Academia.edu, Writers Space Africa, Goodreads, Afri-Library and Kinsman Quarterly. Semi-finalist for Black Diaspora Award, shortlisted for Natives Award, and longlisted for Iridescence and Dr. Paul Kalanithi writing awards in 2024. He likes sports, writing and scientific researches.
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