to be queer in this country is to wear too much black for funerals / to be dragged out of the closeted embrace / to bear too much loss / to carry a whole city in your belly / i left black holes for thickest skin / and blood / my elastic heart took an oath of resistance from hostile tongues and foul teeth / in this country / we are buried in the places they want us to be / we say our names before looking up to god for the promised america / existing is like drawing too near a black hole / once i held a boy’s ash / renamed it my new savior / once i bent my waist to the tomb of a boy / i spilled his tomb with sunflowers and roses / i lazarused his bones / my scream was loud as i said resurrect / i called the country that bore and fed me dead / and i heard beautiful songs / lyrics like the sound of the living / like the sounds of the wind making good songs / and then i called myself beautiful / and like a fierce chase / death took my casket away from me 

UGONNA-ORA OWOH is a Nigerian poet and model. He is the winner of a 2019 erbacce-prize and a 2019 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize. In 2018, he was the recipient of a Young Romantics Keats-Shelley Prize and a Fowey Short Story Prize. Most recently, he’s a finalist for the Diana Woods Memorial Award for Creative Nonfiction. His work has appeared in the Journal of Compressed Art, Malahat Review, Matador Review, The Puritan, Frontier Poetry, Crab Fat Magazine, and elsewhere.