SENTINEL POETRY (ONLINE) ISSN 1479-425X Magazine Monthly Issue #20 - July 2004 |
Chielozona Eze
The Handwriting
I count myself lucky; I went to Jerusalem, I saw the old wall before bombs began to explode.
On the bus back to our hotel, I found a folded piece of paper, a pretty handwriting that reads: “For the one who cares.” It’s from a woman, one of us, I guessed. She lacked the courage to walk through the wall of praying Jews, like some of us had done, to post her words in a crack of the wailing wall.
Who did she have in mind? Who knows? Aren’t we all gods in garbs of clay, putting out words in the cracks of the unknown? Words, we whisper, fly like Noah’s dove.
If you can't
fly, crawl,
Jerusalem, 1995
Chielozona Eze grew up in Nigeria, graduated from the MFA program of Purdue University. He is currently a fellow at the International Institute of University of California at Los Angeles, 2004/2005. His novel, The Listener, which won the Purdue University annual literary award for Novel-in-progress, 2002, is being considered for publication.
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