Like Me, You Too Are a Conjugation in a Language That Has No Verb; Two Bodies Painting Pain Into Dandelions || by Michael Imossan

FS Review
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Like Me, You Too Are a Conjugation in a Language That Has No Verbs. 


I

There are too many poems in your eyes, 

sarauniyata. salty poems. The last time 

I  tried to filter some, they ran into oceans. I

Hear pain is salty. The day your father's body 

Washed ashore, I insisted: ldogho mmoñ awot enye. 

Water did not kill him, the ocean is too soft to filter breath

From body. 


II

Soon, your sister joined. Nsibidi: At the hospital, I 

watched as she threw her hands like anchors 

Into her lungs; and I thought to myself, aya mom

Abifik amo. She will surely catch her breath.  Afim

Idogho ib^k. The air is too generous to refuse her a little of itself.


III

After your father's death, your mother's in-laws asked 

Her to cleave out her womb for inspection. What womb would 

Bear things that have no shaft dangling between their thighs? 

She was forced to gulp your father's corpse as atonement for 

the sin of not dying before him.  And when she jumped into a river 

To drown her sorrow, it spat her out, said she was too salty, things 

That are soaked in tears are always salty.


IV

Today, at the funeral house, Obong Nsibidi says a vulture

Perches atop your family's lineage (for those who cannot 

See what this means, I vomit my ancestors into their eyes). 

This is to say, the spirits aren't done yet, you too must be 

Washed ashore like seashells abandoned by the tides. 


V

You throw your body into the air, catch it midway and roll in on

The floor as cowries "abiad usen ke usen abiad." One who

Spoils the day, the day spoils too—and I wonder when you

Ever spoilt a day. Soft flower plummeting towards earth with dead

Poems burned into the black of your eyes. Like me, you too are

A conjugation in a language that has no verbs. 


__________________


Two Bodies Painting Pain Into Dandelions 


After reading this poem, you'll agree with me that pain 

can be love's strong bone—a skeleton holding the fleshy

mounds of our love together. Who knew pain could be 

this sensual? I stretch into the soft of my lover's body

and find a grave buried inside. Tell me how many graves 

can a grave swallow? At the hospital, I ask the doctor 

the cure for pneumonia and migraine and the loss of a

father still alive. His face shrinks into a dénouement: 

there's no cure, just the right amount of rest, a little bit 

of warmth and forgetting. How do I measure the right 

amount of rest in a place where restlessness holds the 

signature of hardwork or warmth where snow falls from 

the heart of men sizzling under the sun? God knows I am 

trying, but how does one unremember the undead, erase 

the picturesque scorn of an empty grave epitaphed with the

inscription in memory of a leaving (living) father. 


When my lover says she is on heat, I jump up in excitement. 

You do not understand, in a circumference where cold traverses

the ribs of my lover to her lungs, being on heat is a metaphor for 

saying: look, the sun has sweltered me into painlessness. 

Today, I'm not wishing myself to death. Today, God hasn't died in my throat. 

Something about our pain seems romantic. Say memosa pudica, say my lover

Is a flower sensitive to touch, folding herself along the heaps of goosebumps

Trailing her skin—therefore, herein, our pain is romantically intelligible. 

My lover says: I am having a migraine. It interprets to me as: write me a poem

For my headache. I tell my lover: my spine is a congealing metal. It translates to her  

as: stroke this hardness into orgasm. 


At night, when the sun recedes its glow for the moon in her eyes

The night stretches across our window frame. She dissolves like water 

In my hands, her body wet with pain. I shred a little of my pain to the

wind and watch it twirl with hers. Aroused by this, she strokes the 

hardness of my body into euphoria. This is the only way we know how 

to love—two  graves swallowing themselves in ecstasy; two bodies 

Painting pain into dandelions. 


MEET THE POET:


Michael Imossan is a writer, keen on expressing himself through all genres of literature. He writes from a place of empathy— He has been long-listed for the NigeriaNewsDirect Poetry Prize 2020 and has been interviewed and published by the Daily Trust Newspaper. His works have been published/forthcoming in Inertia Teens Magazine and Small Leaf Press. He is a winner of the Shuzia Redemption April poetry contest. 




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8Comments
  1. I am grateful for otherworldly writer like Mr Michael Immosan. This poems speak to me in ways intimate to my reality; past and present. I do not know what kind words will suffice in appreciating the magic churning from this poems. I only know I do not want to stop reading him. Wishing him Godspeed, hoping to see him at the top.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am grateful for otherworldly writers like Mr Michael Immosan. These poems speak to me in ways intimate to my reality; past and present. I do not know what kind words will suffice in appreciating the magic churning from this poems. I only know I do not want to stop reading him. Wishing him Godspeed, hoping to see him at the top.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your kind words. I really appreciate.

      Delete
  3. Immosan, the first day I experienced your poetry was at the nest and ever since then, you've been doing the job of delivering wonderful pieces.

    The imagery in the first poem added with the ibibio fusion is something very wonderful and I couldn't stop snapping my fingers after each interpretation.

    In a single sentence, you make magic into stanzas and call it poetry.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks boss, I really appreciate. I hope you get inspired more.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow! I haven't read something like these two in a while. It feels warm and good. I wish I could express it better. Immosan, I understood - most parts - and that's a good sign.

    Keep writing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Powerful emotive pieces. God bless you brother!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I have always been Curious about your Writing.You weave words into fine linen.
    Loved Every bit of it

    ReplyDelete
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