Before the laughter
by MAYOWA OYEWALE
Before the laughter was a cry, the crying song as
lovely as what it would give birth to.
No one played it well like I did,
no mouth was that beautiful with a scream.
My legs still shake whenever they remember the dance.
It used to be on a Sunday, Harvest Day, & we’d be on my porch, counting what we’ve
lost:
fathers, friends, innocence, age. We lost count.
I used to be the first to wail, &
it was always a perfect wail, shaking teardrops from the tree of every body.
Before the laughter was pain, my body the size of it.
With my tongue I used to mop the endless flow of blood in my mouth,
used to pour the well in my eyes into a garden of joy
that could no longer talk in flowers.
Before the laughter I waited with running legs, my friends a garland around my neck
& on that porch we would hold ourselves in silence,
& wait & wait for one of us to burst out into
laughter.
by MAYOWA OYEWALE
Before the laughter was a cry, the crying song as
lovely as what it would give birth to.
No one played it well like I did,
no mouth was that beautiful with a scream.
My legs still shake whenever they remember the dance.
It used to be on a Sunday, Harvest Day, & we’d be on my porch, counting what we’ve
lost:
fathers, friends, innocence, age. We lost count.
I used to be the first to wail, &
it was always a perfect wail, shaking teardrops from the tree of every body.
Before the laughter was pain, my body the size of it.
With my tongue I used to mop the endless flow of blood in my mouth,
used to pour the well in my eyes into a garden of joy
that could no longer talk in flowers.
Before the laughter I waited with running legs, my friends a garland around my neck
& on that porch we would hold ourselves in silence,
& wait & wait for one of us to burst out into
laughter.
Mayowa Oyewale is Yoruban. He writes from Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where he is an undergraduate student of English Literature at Obafemi Awolowo University. Mayowa has one of his poems in Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry (Animal Heart Press, 2020), and another forthcoming at Eunoia Review. A lover of photography, you have to follow him on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/mayowa__oyewale?s=09