Ehiorobo Osazuwa Derek - African Poetry Book Fund

AND GOD SAID.

God said, let there be light & plucked
a tumor out of the sky to leave space for the sun.

I’ve always wondered what part of me should be excised
to make room for a smile. The only girl I’ve ever kissed
asked why I taste like hospital wards and salt water.

I told her a story about a tumor, floating in the ocean
after being expelled from heaven. I told her it grew roots,
became a tree, & God made man. Man stole a bite
from a cursed tree, tucked a cancer

safe within his soul. & man begat man, man begat man.
I look at my father & notice how he struggles to meet
my eyes sometimes. I sink into a hospital bed

& ask for my cross to pass over. They call it a crisis.
I call it a body that only knows how to take.
I want to ask my mother how it feels to birth
a black hole, a paradox.

I walk around the house heavy, yet empty.
How much longer until there’s nothing left

to feed this body? I was taught to flay painkillers
on an altar before I learned to ride a bike.

I rinse my mouth with anointing oil, harvest bible verses
from my throat. The doctor hosts delivery sessions — holds my
hands like a priest & offers me a saviour’s blood. I ask him where
my genealogy empties itself & he shows me a curved blade.

God said, let there be light, tied a lasso around the earth
to hold its shadow in place. & man begat man.

One day, man found a woman sitting in the sun.
He tied promises around her waist, tore her shadow,
right from under her feet. Man & woman begat
boy. Boy grew into a flower coughing up colours.

I will ask my mother how it feels to birth a paradox,
be delivered of your own shadow. My body’s natural enemy
is the sun. I wait for night,

bury my face in her bosom. She splits my skull
with her lips & watches in delight as I leak salt water.

I rest my aching head on her laps, beg her to hold me,
& God says, let there be light.

FAMILY POLITICS.

Father wakes up, tears every curtain down and announces the morning. It is Sunday. Mother starts peeling her scab in the kitchen. Brother helps. I stand in front of a mirror. Slow. As usual. Counting my ribs.

Father’s voice becomes a trumpet. Mother packs her dead cells in a plate. It is Sunday. Everyone is dressed for church except me. Slow. As usual.

Father threatens to leave me. I say I should have been left at birth. Mother puts her hand over his mouth. Mother gets bitten. Brother licks her blood.

It is Sunday. I am in the backseat of my father’s Mercedes, thinking about death and life. I think about God, about fathers who hang up their sons to bleed. I think. Slow. As usual.

Brother offers me a piece of mother’s fresh scab. I chew it until it melts. Until I begin to melt. Father starts the car and drives.

WHO DO THE DEAD CALL FOR HELP?

Nothing breaks a mother

like cradling a weeping

eulogy.

My mother’s hands know

how it feels to try & fail

to squeeze life into a

freezing child.

My mother’s hands know

how it feels to try & fail

to squeeze life into a

freezing child .

So what am I if not

a cruel joke?

Alive but only just

weak bones, tired eyes,

a warehouse of

ache.

Call the priest.

Tell him I am ready

to break into hymns.

I sleep under a hovering

blade. Do you know how

it feels to live, only waiting,

to be dropped into a funeral?

What am I if not

dead on arrival?

I am no miracle. I am no fighter. I am a page torn off God’s least

favourite book. Who do I call to help me break this body into the

dirge it was always meant to be?

I find myself, holding on to life

& gag in disgust. I do not want

to leave my mother. I roll in the

cold sheets of the hospital bed,

hiding my face from the fear in her eyes.

I do not want to break my mother.

I do not want to break.

CRISIS AT WARD 7

Death waits at the door. A scream is born.
A scream is born. A mother weeps.

A mother weeps. Prayers go up.
Prayers go up. A boy chokes.

A boy chokes. Breathe in.
Breathe in. Wait.

Wait. The painkillers will work.
The painkillers will work. Death waits at the door.

Death waits at the door. A scream is born.
A scream is born. A father makes a fist.

A father makes a fist. A boy’s body breaks.
A boy’s body breaks. A mother prays.

A mother prays. Promises fed to a flame.
Promises fed to a flame. There is too much smoke.

There is too much smoke.Breathe in.
Breathe in. Wait.

.
Wait. Breathe out.
Breathe out. The doctor says you are strong.

The doctor says you are strong. The painkillers will work.
The painkillers will work.Death leaves the ward.

Death leaves the ward. A scream dissolves.
A scream dissolves. A mother weeps.

LOVE AIN’T NOTHING BUT,

A song opening at its chorus.
Fresh fever, night club, strobe lights,
steam, lots of steam,

body pressing into body,
a pulse, buried
in noise.

I’m sorry, I have never made
it this far. I believe I have always existed
in space waiting

to be found. Love ain’t nothing but
lyric, shattered into pieces,

shards of confession
buried under tongue,
waiting for tongue.

My girlfriend kisses me
& her mouth tastes like blood.
We all carry hurt in different shapes.

Love ain’t nothing but
a dream, folded into a dream.
She covers my eyes

with her palms
& I am in space,
soaked in silence,
waiting to be found.

I hold this girl’s hand, & wish
I was her blanket. She pulls
me close & asks me to dance.

We are both shivering.
We both smell like grief.
We are still too young.

Love ain’t nothing but a kiss,
& a mouth uttering apologies,
& a mouth learning new habits,

& a mouth, shaped for a song
born at its chorus,
ending. . .

DEATH DEMANDS SILENCE.

Gentle flame digging into a candle,
wax dripping into wax,
song trapped somewhere between
throat and tongue,
clothes caught in the breeze,
too heavy to dance.

At the funeral of a man I never met,
I take note of the silence, & try to build
a poem. Grief has a way of peeling

colour out of everything. My body settles
into the quietness. I try to build
a poem, & it slips off my tongue－ heavy,

like a name is heavy after loss,
like our memories sit heavy on
our chest at night. Like a casket is
heaviest just as it is fed to the earth.

Death demands silence. & maybe even this can be
shaped into lyric. I stare at the man
grinning on the glossy page of a rumpled
obituary－ colour peeled fresh off －quiet,

like a song stretched all
the way to its end, like a poem
born at a funeral.

STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO EATING YOUR OWN TEARS

Thank your father for the meal. Sit on the dusty floor in your room and cross your legs. Whisper a prayer to your God. At times like this, every sound is broken down to whispers. Whisper a prayer to your God, wait for his response, nod even though you receive none.

Take a spoon. Appreciate its weight in your hand, how even the smallest things have ways they demand to be noticed. Let your tongue bathe before swallowing. You will taste your mother’s neck －raw, fresh from being bitten by your father, you will taste the salt of her sweat.

Whatever happens, do not leave the room until you have emptied the bowl. You will hear thunder, you will hear your mother’s shriek shatter on the wall over and over until all that’s left is a hollow shell, you will hear your brother pound his fist on a door until it starts to bleed, you will hear him hide his sobs in coughs. Do not leave your room. If you find chunks of hair, or another tooth knocked out your mother’s mouth in the bowl, pick them out and keep eating.

When you’re done, wait for your father to bury his voice between your mother’s legs. Go to the kitchen, rinse out your bowl and leave. Do not say anything when you see your brother eyeing a knife. Stop at your parents’ door, whisper a thank you, it will come out shaped as an apology, but that is fine, they will not care.You might start coughing, but make sure they do not hear. Go to your room, sit on your bed, and wait for your next meal.

LAGOS NIGHTS ARE POETIC.

like you, this city is nocturnal,
makes friends with the night.

you’re sitting beside your open
window, hoping a poem
finds you.

& the wind carries a party
to your table.

fuji music mixes well
with cold. & you nod your head
to the chaos in the beats.

you’re still trying
to find new allies, so you imagine
this city also grieves,

refuses the embrace of sleep, & suddenly
the music becomes the flesh of defiance.
grief now wears the face
of a lagos party.

you won’t write a single word
this night. you will cry,
stare out the window,

watch a bat skin a mango,
& leave it dangling
naked.

MY UNCLE EXPLAINS WHY HIS KNUCKLES ARE FULL OF SCARS

My body is a wild flower that only blooms at night. When the day comes, I rise with the sun, you see, I consider myself its student. I have always been given to combustion. Once, when I was 13, I threw a fistful of termites into a flame & watched it dance with glee.

I am saying, I do not believe in softness. My father taught me to chew through ropes. I once watched him rip his shirt from my mother’s hands. I emptied my tear ducts that day & I have not cried since.

When you close one door, your body cuts open a new one. So, I wait for when the horizon swallows the sun to start my ritual of release. I create windows with my fists & lick the blood right off. Pain is an old friend I visit often.

I don’t understand you & your obsession with broken things. Beauty is not something I concern myself with all the time. Don’t misunderstand me, I have held butterflies & ignored the urge to crush. I know how to pick flowers & blow petals into the wind.

But I know not to dwell on one thing too long, & I believe there is something wrong with your generation. I saw a boy cry over a cut the other day. He looked at me funny when I asked if he has never kissed his own wound.

You are soft. I am trying to understand that, but I cannot respect it. A man should be a hammer & nothing else. If you fill your pockets with flowers, what will your lovers keep in their hair? Don’t misunderstand me, I know how to hold butterflies & sing to fading sunsets.

I sang to you when you were a baby — held you — thought of how even fire at one point needs a gentle touch to grow. I looked at my sister with eyes as dry our father’s palm & you wiggled your nose-yawning. Your wings — fluttering.

I WANT TO WRITE POEMS AS SOFT AS A BABY’S LAUGH.

Let cracks eat through
every page, become arched windows
for the sun to crawl in.

Let my grief leap off the spaces it once hid,
meet the floor－ body of a denounced idol.
Let it break into raindrops,

until I find songs, stuck, in the valley
between stanzas. I don’t want
to write about abrasions anymore.

I am tired of giving names to these ridges
on my thighs. Let me be the hand
that holds constellations, & paints the sky

for lonely sailors. Let me be the promise of land,
a worthy site, for anchors
to leave kisses.

Let me learn to shatter
in a way that births melodies.

Let God dance,
cast his shadow on my teary face

Ehiorobo Derek is a writer, poet, and spoken word artist. His work has been published in the African Writers Review, Praxis, and the How to Fall in Love anthology, by Inkspired Nigeria. You can find him on Instagram @derekimagines, where he writes poetry for a small community of literary enthusiasts.