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| Image Credit: Dante |
Ode to Araromi & other Poems
by Goodnews Karibo
All the Warm Flowers of Christmas
for Sr. Martina Mmagu
it would not come to me any different,
the slow, epic sound of Christmas.
I have always found a way to give off
the feeling, the bittersweet surrender
of its topaz fever. I think of home from
hinterland. only trees cold with white tissues
and reptiles crossing the sun. I suck at a
warm bone, eat cereals in their numbers
I make calls across to the South to family,
many rivers and dusty roads from Lagos
my face-cloth drapes a hazel; say less about
the feet incarcerated in black caravan
meanwhile, nuns scurry into the Convent,
packs of meal fly in from Domino Pizza
the sudden prank; sisters on the run—the
papers landmarking the position of the
grotto—the tender feet of Christ.
I heave to Flora's Secrets. fireworks
in my bones. memory bound by the departure
of Faith. small storm eaten by waves of longing
why does the body complete its cycle in grief?
a spectrum crammed to the tapering finger of
a narrow peninsula. it would not come to me
any different. this slow, epic sound of Christmas.
Riding the Wave of Bedlam
to write about my father,
I must first open through
many seasons for an ideal vista.
the years of lack have to give way.
in my mind, no scripture, like a reptile,
must run across board. the vision must
scale beyond the twigs of stability,
but must take a breather in music,
a smoking gun for the birds riding
the wave of bedlam. I must come to
the evocative whiff of colorings and
thrust my nose in; I must flick the
years out of their cocoon, each year,
a canvas strewn with broken days.
each year, an odyssey engorged with
the heat of escape. religion must be
lifted out of its place, a mirrored
weapon noosed around the neck.
I must start a fire with all the woods
of anxiety, and listen hard for the
rattling combustion of chaos.
a bouquet of sun-smeared cornflower
must not dangle beneath the porch of
our house. no light must flourish, at least
not to a palpable measure. and the
mongrels must double down on their
sensational growling, and drop a tear
beneath the byline of names crushing out,
beneath the streamlined entrance of darkness.
Ode to Araromi
I gape at the fluorescent lights
with a diagonal cut across my shoulder bone.
with an empty armour I edge
toward the fields ahead of me. one leg held
in a storm, the other fondling
brown, alienated thrushes. there is something
about the past that erupts like
a smoked-out mouse. if you listen enough, you will
feel the earth oscillating through
my skin, drowning the inner muffling echoes.
I could not catch the birds of
silence in my dream; a reptile aiming at a moth
across the landscape. the leaves
fold into the tumbling wind, a fire slouching on
and on as though in protest
against the absence of places to gut.
Goodnews Karibo is a Port Harcourt poet who travels the earth in search of stories to tell Kaleela. His poems have appeared in Shallow Tales Review, African Writer, Brittle Paper, etc. He is a Best of the Net Nominee. He tweets via @slendergrass
