OUR HOME IS A GURNEY
our home is a gurney upon which we lie & picture
the inchoate sketches of penguins on the ceiling board.
++++here, we graft our tomorrow in the heavy tears
that cut midway, with the half of our name in shards.
up here, bones of unplanted bodies lie,
sometimes, folding in blood-clotted mattress.
from the babbles of yesterday, we’d coupled
this bed with giant castors of broken tyres,
maimed frames, and disjointed iron rims:
an alchemy for the natives who disdain flowers
or mausoleums, and wouldn’t see them on their demise.
our home is a gurney
and the nurses who tend it had sworn with blood
to wheel the sick over the crag; we howl, we sprint.
down the precipice is a storm surge in a slippery morgue,
a cruel heart, & we are in between.
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CHILDREN OF THE SMOOTH-BARK TREE
our last-born gained admission to learn trees.
as if treachery broke from nature’s womb,
news of sorrow came outpacing the sun.
like a giant fly mocking dripping yaws,
threnody upon threnody, we marry the lyre
saying, Rubber has fallen, Rubber has fallen.
yet the roots stayed anchored & seeds fluted life.
how will the boy know chlorophyll now?
the colour of our roots, how can he tell?
so we grew petals of joy for our father,
drying the tears he had gathered in our home.
father wore these cuts of rubber for years.
as children made from the smooth-bark tree,
too, we wore the stench of latex lumps—
the garment our last-born had loved to have.
today, somewhere in America’s corner
our father sits on a straw chair,
eyes closed to hear the flute of rubber seed
saying we are far away from home:
from the ruthless tapping knives,
the whimpers of scarred woods,
and the flow of white blood into our cups:
a drop,
a coagulation,
it’s how we’re made.
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Poems © Ernest Amayogbe
Image: OpenIcons Pixabay