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Marial Awendit: The Song of Leaks and Calabashes

THE SONG OF LEAKS AND CALABASHES

I leak away in words
I cannot hold inside God.
I leak away in the promises
I am not enough to keep.

Plus
The hole under this calabash emptying it
Was made by a needle meant to repair a crack,
And most people I love to boat away
In me keep drilling holes for decor.

Plus
My space is where other voices parked silence,
And I cannot knit the peace to birth words
Hard enough to erect volcanic mountains.

Plus
I can scold the universe to keep clean
But get too heavy to clean my mind,
Swimming through the mud of the world.

I leak away, my mind still unfenced
Like a bomb blast armored by air.

—————

STILL LIFE WITH SILENCE

The silence in the attic
Is a contribution from all things
Capable of silence, like God.

Perhaps colorless words get leached
Into a vacuum in walls. Laughter too.
Glee is rumored to come in any color
And size,
Given lack of color is also color.

I have lived worlds where the walls:
-May accept any color I give them
-Will not hang my scream up
Like this portrait of a mouth
Already bunged up with grey dust
To tell whether the body wears
Past bloodless pains as a decoration
Of ostrich feathers upon its head,
Or that the mouth hides wailing
To invite in laughter.
Or that the Earth moves on, painless
As a fossil of a dinosaur’s burnt bone.

—————

MEMORANDUM OF MIS/UNDERSTANDING

+++ Is that my faith somersaulting
++++ Through the eye of a needle?

++++++++++++++ I have been full of all parts mine
+++++++++++++++ But empty of the universe.

My flaws are as submissive
As a corpse:
They’d accept the world
Openmouthed,++++
Like a baby taking
A stranger’s nipple.

Their tails are wrapping
My arms.

With only Your apple stolen from You,
I shall run to You whenever deprived,
Only until all my flaws are stolen.

I am bleeding in words.

These rocks have pink stripes.
Petals are crushed on the floor.

An egg falls and
Generations of feathers
Are yellow on the floor.
Is the earth globing lava or water?
What if a river is pushed against its will?
What’s your take on breaking
A march of ants with a giant granite barricade?

My silence is decomposing the leaves.

…to be given something I cannot use,
Lamarck says my hands will disappear
If I do nothing for even just a thousand years.

Will I postpone my breath?

Some baboons eat half a fruit,
Some know which is almost poisoned.

Is there a cost for everything I carry?
The universe in my head?
God watching a dandelion wilt in my hand?

The flowers, wet at the core are still waving.
I am still crossing the river
I am made of.

The water lilies, wet at the core, are still showing.
The town priest built a wall capped
With broken glasses, around his house.
Is that not one hint of doubt in your power to guard?

This path must start where the first one ends.
This path starts in me to end somewhere in the world.

Has my body been traveled by feet not mine?

Sometimes, I wake up to footfalls of emptiness.

Did you agree the bodies You make
Vow to things and people?

Volcanoes are erupting with waiting.
Walls are decaying with waiting.
Flowers are returning.
My horn is still louder than I blow.
My grandmother says, ‘hide a peanut
Paste in your hand behind your back
And it will leak away’

—————
Poems (c) Marial Awendit
Image: (c) Sola Osofisan

Marial Awendit
Marial Awendit
Marial Awendit a.k.a. James Marial Matueny Majak, is a South Sudanese poet, essayist, and songwriter. He is published in various literary magazines and anthologies. He is the author of the chapbook poetry collection, The Night Does Not Drown Us, published by Babishai-Niwe Poetry Foundation, Keeping the Sun Secret, a poetry collection published by Mwanaka Media and Publishing Pvt Ltd, Whispers over a Brewing Dawn, published by Carnelian Heart Publishing Ltd, The Nilotic Coddiwomple, published by Acacia Publishers Ltd and Who Told You to Be God? published by Mwanaka Media and Publishing Pvt Ltd. Marial won the South Sudan Youth Talent Award (2016) for the category of Best Poet, the Babishai-Niwe Poetry Award (2018), and the African Writers Award for Poetry (2023).

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