Bless me father [if you’d not blind me] for I’ve seen— seen a woman
Drag her son from womb to water to save him from the fire seen him thrash in
Search of flight like a book midfall from a ledge… it’s been years
Since we reduced our knees to prayers or howled our names into
The waste of confessionals hoping they send them back our way
–
Maybe the city burns because god only swoops in when we are reduced
To complete nudity as a man or anything that started out coy as a boy
I do not know love other than the need to be powerless & be punished for it
I do not know home other than what I’ve been trying to be lately—run towards her open mouth
A lonely house below a stonehill but fall steadfast into forgetting before reaching
–
She said I could be anything if I put my mind to it from stoic to
Tantrum & the smokescreen between but I chose the audacity to burn
& breathe to be & not to be in a city turning to dust shaken off tired feet
–
I pulled my first set of teeth falling mouthfirst to the floor―a kiss to the
Devil’s scalp my sister between my mother’s knees had tripped me
Grunting afterwards the same sigh our grandfather allowed when he stroked
His final row on a broken boat towards god
–
So I pull into a field of burning dreams cut the breathing & alight from
My body loving―like sobriety―is wayfaring no purer penury
Than watching a raindrop push itself towards the heat of thirsting tongue
–
& though the city burns spent as the outcry of the only forsaken son
& the gods oblige us to fight their futile wars they let us choose
Our own weapons our own roads to run…
JK Anowe
JK Anowe, Igbo-born poet and essayist, is author of the chapbooks The Ikemefuna Tributaries: a parable for paranoia (Praxis Magazine Online, 2016) and SKY RAINING FISTS (Madhouse Press, 2019). He’s a recipient of the inaugural Brittle Paper Award for Poetry in 2017 and a finalist for the 2019 Gerard KraakAward. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Palette Poetry, Brittle Paper, Elsewhere Lit, Expound, Enkare Review, Gnarled Oak, Poetry Life & Times, Praxis, and elsewhere. He is Editor: Poetry Chapbooks, at Praxis Magazine Online. He lives, teaches, and writes from somewhere in Nigeria. Twitter: @JkAnowe IG: @jk.anowe
This entry appeared in The Limits Issue