CHIJIOKE AMUNNADI is a Nigerian poet. He is the winner of the inaugural 2002 ANA Gabriel Okara Prize for Poetry with pilgrim’s passage, as well as the inaugural Glenna Luschei Prize. He is the author of fire within, a river’s journey, and a field of echoes.
To write a poem
You break the shell
and pour your white
and yolk into a bowl
add pepper, spices
salt of metaphors
beat mind and lines
into one whole poem
and pour into a page
or your twitter pan
beneath it, gas-lighting
all kinds of fire, fury
and usual flame eyes
until everything cooks
name, poem and sense
ready to be devoured.