i refuse to begin this line with burning words—
silence bores into me, forced me to lose the innocence
of delight that once pooled in my throat. & i wonder
if burdens can be exchanged for freedom. a maggot
writhes in my throat, & i draw a blade against it, but
they say, you are the first child. you must learn the
language of patience. now i know—the first fruit to fall
from my mother’s cervix is left alone to face the warfront.
here, my father is wind, plucking me, unripe, from God’s
clenched fist, & teaching me how to eulogize my fear
before stepping onto the trench. i become an historian,
uprooting the archive of every aged man in my bloodlines:
learning how they all survive the adulthood, life shooting
at them like misleading bullets veering from its receiver.
& i learn i am not the first to strip away from feeding
from mother’s breast. that’s, my tongue is arsonist;
my throat, a pyre for every patience they buried in me.
the first fruit rots, but the tree— / the tree learns to root
in its own fire. i write my name in ash— / a soldier’s epitaph,
i have also learnt to whistle words into prayer: Elohim, let
the wind father my ashes. let your fist unclench.
Ismail Yusuf Olumoh
Ismail Yusuf Olumoh, SWAN VII, is a writer, teacher, and spoken word artist pursuing a DVM at the University of Maiduguri. His works appear and forthcoming in South Carolina, Palette Poetry, Brittle Paper, Eunoia Review, Rowayat, Eboquills, Strange Horizons, and others. He writes from Ilorin, Kwara State. You can find him on x @icreatives0.
Photo by Greg Kubrak on Unsplash