A REVIEW OF NWUGURU CHIDIEBERE SULLIVAN’S ALTERNATE ROOM
By Saheed Sunday
Snap:
I blank into a blood plunged room
& script a horror movie of the
tech age. Every hour, I upgrade
the villain into a generous
cloned man whose mouth is a
coven of bats. Every
minute, he spits a bat as a preying
angel of the dark. I watch it,
every moment, I pull my eyes across
the cemetery that makes a
jumble beneath my skin, until
my right pupil becomes
the only permeable pore for the light
that seeks to smear my core.
What I am made into: a gallery with
metal doors that cave into
a mouthless tomb. I view the ruthless space
as a throat with talons; no air
can wash it into a slippery face of frames.
I need not this sort of heavy grace
a knife offers to a wounded skin. To protect
me from the gory beast who moons
my world with a bulb that threatens to chew
light into my flesh, I gather myself into
heaps of opaque bones. On dragging my
cold systems, I peck my filthy
core. My eyes roll towards the siren-blue
of the night sky, the iron wall
swallows the light. I drop into the darkness
& the light escapes me.
Snap:
A new room opens, I walk into it
bright & alive.
It is noteworthy that when it comes to poetry, there are certain intentions behind choosing titles. This, in a way, means that titles are essentially part of the poem. In some works of poetry, we see the title serving as the first line on which the real first line develops; in some, the title serves as a closure to the last line of the poem; however, in Chidiebere’s case, we see the title serving as a foreshadowed extension into the subject matter of the poem. The title, Alternate Room, is therefore a wide lens through which we can see what the poem aims to achieve in totality. Herein, we have two words: alternate and rooms, giving us an insight into the fact that the poem foregrounds a two-faced entity switching identities per the room it is in. This entity, the poet’s persona, is faced with some sort of duality of personality.
To start with, there are two necessary halves in this poem, also with alternate descriptions: the first half, presents a gothic atmosphere; and the second, presents an optimistic atmosphere. However, an overall look into the poem makes one doubt whether either of the two halves is even real in the first place, or just an extension of the existential crises prevailing in the persona’s head.
For instance, each of the two halves starts with a “snap”, which in a way foregrounds a semantic idea of hypnosis. So to say, there are some instances where people get hypnotised by professionals just with a snap. And we can shift the semanticity from here, saying that the persona, in the two halves, has hypnotised himself into seeing the two worlds he created — the gothic and the upbeat.
To establish the likelihood of the idea of hypnosis in the two halves, one can then rest the analysis on the setting of the poem after the first snap. The line starts, “ I blank into a blood plunged room & script a horror movie of the tech age”. In it, we can use the idea of the persona “blanking” to cement the motif of hypnosis as presented earlier. The whole process of scripting a movie (which we can say is in his head), also, further establishes this motif. Thus, as a result, we see the first half of the persona’s hypnosis of himself showing a very gothic world. Most probably, this is the aftermath of a trauma that has been carried all his life or is even currently carrying. From the hint of “blood” and “tomb” in the first half, we might say that this trauma is from a fatal experience the persona has been faced with — from the death of someone close, the death of something crucial in him, or something similar to either of these two things.
In this particular half, the idea of the persona simply living in his own head is more believable. The way it ends, “I drop into the darkness & the light escapes me”, foregrounding a totality of his probable doom but instantly nullifying this assertion immediately in the next line somehow makes it easier to accept that neither of these worlds is set in motion as seen in the poem. For all that is known, these worlds are just reflections of psychological trauma, and they might necessarily be fictional.
In the second half of the poem, however, the setting is simply an alternate. As gothic and dark as the first setting looks, the second half is exactly the opposite of it. No blood to symbolise danger or someone being hurt. No mouthless tomb to symbolise dead bodies or dead dreams. No gory beast to eat the persona up. Just the poet’s persona walking into a new room (another hypnosis in his head), bright & alive.
