Bio
Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri (he/him) is a Black poet and prose writer from Ghana. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Transition Magazine, The Malahat Review, Colorado Review, North American Review, Mantis (Stanford), Chestnut Review, Orion Magazine, Berkeley Poetry Review, Protean Magazine, Minyan Magazine, and elsewhere. He is a nominee for the Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, the BREW Poetry Award, and the 2026 Caine Prize. He is the first-place winner of the African Writers Award (Poetry), the winner of Poetry Archive Now! Wordview 2025, a finalist for the 2025 Adinkra Poetry Prize, runner-up for the 2026 Cambridge Poetry Prize, and was longlisted for the Renard Press Poetry Prize. He is an Obsidian Foundation Fellow alum and was featured in the Obsidian Foundation Showcase with The Poetry Society.
Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri
Lighthouse Birds
They circle the tower, small engines
of salt & feather, drawn to a pulse
that does not sleep. The lamp turns,
a patient eye combing the dark sea.
Each bird writes its brief signature
against the beam, wings catching fire
for a second, then gone—
ink erased by distance.
Below, the water keeps its long argument,
gnashing at stone, rehearsing collapse.
Above, these bodies revise the night,
tilting toward brightness they cannot keep.
Some strike the glass & fall,
a soft punctuation at the base of light.
Others learn the rhythm of turning,
how to enter, leave, enter again.