I hold the earth at
night in a field
for my father
by OTHUKE UMUKORO
In another version of the poem, we are out
fishing, afloat on open dark water,
surrounded
by the breathing of old trees & he is narrating
for the zillionth time the story of how he met
my mother. Somewhere along the way I am
a boy handing him a screwdriver as he bends
to
fix his broken car & a boy in memory crying
into that dreaded old building called school,
with his calm voice trailing & saying
be better than me & listen to your teachers.
In another version of the poem I would
show my friends the brightness of his
laughter when he shaves in the morning
& how he would always leave chunks
of meat for us, no matter the size of his
hunger.
A body is a calendar
gathering dates for
bones & echoes.
& in another version of the poem, a red-winged
blackbird smelling of deforestation is sitting on
the windowsill of the hospital room & the elderly
doctor is saying they did everything they could but
the impact of the crash left them with little to hang on.
I am pulling parts of him from the roots of a river, a
shared orange, a song, a silence, the discipline in his
voice & calling the space in my throat a working
object
that breaks down that remembers that gets lost.
In my prayer last night I said a body
in grief is bilingual & parted a sea
of grey fragments.
In this version of the poem, in
the open coffin, he looks like a
boy sleeping soundlessly in the
middle of a hurricane & how I
just want to reach out to him and
nudge him a little and tell him
mama says dinner is ready.
Still, in another version of the
poem, I tell folks I have been very lucky.
night in a field
for my father
by OTHUKE UMUKORO
In another version of the poem, we are out
fishing, afloat on open dark water,
surrounded
by the breathing of old trees & he is narrating
for the zillionth time the story of how he met
my mother. Somewhere along the way I am
a boy handing him a screwdriver as he bends
to
fix his broken car & a boy in memory crying
into that dreaded old building called school,
with his calm voice trailing & saying
be better than me & listen to your teachers.
In another version of the poem I would
show my friends the brightness of his
laughter when he shaves in the morning
& how he would always leave chunks
of meat for us, no matter the size of his
hunger.
A body is a calendar
gathering dates for
bones & echoes.
& in another version of the poem, a red-winged
blackbird smelling of deforestation is sitting on
the windowsill of the hospital room & the elderly
doctor is saying they did everything they could but
the impact of the crash left them with little to hang on.
I am pulling parts of him from the roots of a river, a
shared orange, a song, a silence, the discipline in his
voice & calling the space in my throat a working
object
that breaks down that remembers that gets lost.
In my prayer last night I said a body
in grief is bilingual & parted a sea
of grey fragments.
In this version of the poem, in
the open coffin, he looks like a
boy sleeping soundlessly in the
middle of a hurricane & how I
just want to reach out to him and
nudge him a little and tell him
mama says dinner is ready.
Still, in another version of the
poem, I tell folks I have been very lucky.
Othuke Umukoro is a poet, playwright & an overzealous woodpecker from Nigeria. He started writing poetry out of fear & has received a handful of rejection letters but they cannot dampen his spirit! His works have appeared in Sleet Magazine, Random Sample Review, Kissing Dynamite Poetry Journal, The Sunlight Press & elsewhere. He tweets @othukeumukoro19