Closure
I kiss the blunt, dull the world, body
languid like jelly, slow like suffering.
I wander small spaces, inhale the dust &
grime of years—memory, a tender hand
on my shoulder. I’m alone. Always, the
nagging feeling of shadowy eyes all over
my body, their teeth white, waiting for
me to offer myself. At night, silence
impeached by generators, I lie still, a
placid stream, the pebbles of my breath
held in my palm, waiting to skip, then
drown this body into finity. There, on
the table, the blunt glows, calls me to its
worship, its lips, a kiss soft, wet, full of
hungry smoke, an invasion of lassitude.
I hunger, I thirst, I touch the door with
blind hands, place my ear to the deaf wall,
listen & feel a room breathe. I find a grey
hair, so fine like ashes after fire. I do not
look at the blood in my eyes & I sink deep
into the hole, where to stay will mean eternal
absence of self. It is seductive, this calling,
this need to efface self from memory. I close
my eyes, sink low & let myself go. There’s no
one there, no light, no sound, just my body
settling like an old building into the earth.
In the daily survival of the unfortunate
In this country, a father walks out & never returns. Truth!
& a mother is a shadow. In the night, she covers the home
with her body. Her fingers are nimble for the tears she
must hide. Even children fear. In the day, a man sits the curb,
his head heavy on his palms, an offering for anyone—come,
take. He wrestles the sun & burns, a rabid fire & he calls it
hustling. A woman hides her sleep in the garden where her
jewels are buried & she is always lying, a griot filling
stomachs with words. The children, promised tomorrow,
learn to play today away as their mother patches shame
& wears it as her wedding dress. & sometimes, a husband
raises his fists, fury at all the genuflecting, breaks his wife
into pieces of kolanut & puts in his neighbours mouth to
chew & forget. You see, a woman lifts weights beyond the
suppleness of her neck. In this country, a wife hides her
pain in the pocket of her waist bag. She knows the science
of counting kobos. She learns to forget beauty & desire.
In the city, husbands die over little. They hide in their sleep.
A wife hides in the struggle to breathe evening in the
brooding hunger of her home. Sometimes, she rails, her
fingers claws, deep into night, by the door, unstitches shame
& force feed her neighbours the taproot of her nightmare.
Sometimes, the children are cruel for they are broken early,
for to sit with father is to know death & to work with mother
is to know death. Their eyes become dreamy & their mouths
become graves. This is how they wait for God to come
& answer. In this country, we patter to & fro, grey as
ghosts, unsure hands stretched forth into dusk.
We call it hope, this spilling of time in our raw palms.
We dream of chains & sudden accidents of fortune.
& sometimes, all we do is fuck on our battered
matrimony. We fuck to forget, to pretend, to
remain human. Our prayers stay tattered, stained
with constant thumbing. God must know the shades
of our hunger by heart. There must be a record of our
trauma. & we wait, for someone to come, give answer.
My lover takes me
My lover knots the bed sheet into
a garrotte—my throat is open to her
knife fingers strumming my spine—a
three fingered artifice. I dance
the zanku, my fire, a pilate washing
hands before a mob of desires. Look
at us, intertwined within the mirror’s
ugly gaze, our bones clang—bells,
unchained from holy work. Where
does the harmattan ends & the desert
begins? Your hands suffocate me with
want & I’m dying to give satiation.
Your body is a house of horrors,
my hands are its willing residents—we
abide, lacklustre before the sun,
mocking the carriage of chicks within
threadbare hen wings. My lover, you
are a strong drink, wrestled between
teeth, gargled upon the return of
seething insects nesting on corroded
tree trunks. Look at me, a buoyant
balloon, a terrible scream opened at
the seams, dragging into its hungry
gaping wound, your tender blush of
sunset—my lover, we are deep cuts
in each other’s wrists, sandalled feet
climbing the cross with underhanded
welcomes wobbling into goodbyes.
Pass the gentle reefer to the leaves still
picking streetlights from dewy
refulgence—suck sweetness from my
lips. I’m sweet as Lucifer’s orchestra—a
tambourine tied to your thumb. I’m
your music, you are my song.
In the murky undercurrents of living
This bus seats’ bone stretch taunts your hands
small in your palms your shoulders hunched
beside window spinning trees & faces pressed
cold fish eyes counting droplets spilling in
windswept deluge. Your smile is far & conductor
keeps returning 5 naira back into your purse. The
clasp is broken butterfly wings in silt. The bus
shudders off its chill the driver is cradled inside
circumference of wheel tires revolving through
the different faces of moon pockmarked road
splattered with every promise that has failed you.
The faces revolve into wet signposts full—death
& lice & hungry insects. You want to throw up
hands the SARS men stand lightning struck
trees—black & smoking—heedless headlights
wavering like souls ascending mirages from
David’s dream. You shift from warmth your body
unsure of its welcome if its complacent repose
is true. The driver squeezes 100 naira into wet
prayers & SARS man catches balled paper pro baller
his eyes turned away his hands conducting the
orchestra of discontent on forward march to silence.
The sigh envelopes the bus & you are compressed
behind woman backside. She reeks of several market
stalls bargains & cheap buys. You want capture your
fire inside candle wick of her thawing sorrows. She is
saving the feathered mouths stretched slack in the
nest. You catch your soul in embrace shiver as the
journey rattles on & on.
The desire to be lonely
the madness in me will kill you. you will
save me—the last bit of meat in a pot
of soup. i love blank pages the empty
numb promise—words are enough.
my silence will kill you. you will put
words thick like oily fingers in my orifice.
you will unsay things i did not say &
say i cannot unsay them. my hands are
tied behind my back holding my six
o’clock shadow throttling me. you will save me.
you promised. my laughter will kill you
with envy at the white teethed empty
handed maw between my lips. you want
to know this darkness drowned in my throat? i
push my tongue to the roof of the world
searching—a punitive expedition—for glottal
stops alveolar plosives & hyenas bite back
—carrion up here only they laugh. my
misery will kill you. you will carry my body
a lantern expecting light & all the
hungry hands that eat within me will swallow
your feet. it will mean nothing. you cannot
journey for me. you cannot prise open the
lockjaw of slow rust. i envy the bark of trees—the
slow congealed sap the long story they tell
without lips teeth or tongue—their pages
are never white & blank & numb & empty—where the
lumberman tattooed his promise where the wind
claimed its prize where the squirrel scampered
to brown nuts where the river marked its
height & how despite the treachery of
staying still it has grown. you will leave me
despite everything. when i have used a
blunt object—a word of inflection tonal perfection
elocution & diction you will know—hate
is a love borne disease. you will know.
Osahon Oka is a Bini/Kwale writer living in Nigeria. He holds a B.A in English and Literary Studies. A Best of the Net nominee, his writing can be found or is forthcoming on Praxis magazine, Feral Journal, Perhappened magazine, Malarkey Books, Neurological, Down River Road Review, Lit Quarterly, Ghost Heart Lit, Jalada Africa and elsewhere. His first book is forthcoming from Praxis Books. He serves as a review correspondent on Praxis Magazine.
