Merfolks as a Passage from My Thoughts and Doings

by Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto

All the weights in my body know my reflection.
Each poem I write reminds me that
my village river is a memory carrying my navel threads.
Please come close and feel this scar on my face,
feel how it marks me with evidence of my childhood.
My mother said the scar is a vase
where I can graph my questions and thoughts.
So much for what I think
about when I don’t understand certain things.
I open my mouth to take in the sky blessings
and thereafter arrange them as emblems stitching my wounds.
I want to essay down my thoughts on heaven and
those who know the secrets of its creation.
It’s such a big task knowing a thing and
finding the better language to say the known thing.
Every night I offer a can full of ablution to the mosquitoes:
rather they be on silence than play notes to my sleep.
― and I am no wicked fellow.
I am just a body asking for a peaceful night.
Have I told you how history is a delicate artifact?
To understand a thing is to understand God.
To understand metaphors is to understand poetry.
And yes, this poem is never about a thing.
And all the reflections in my body know my weight.

Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto (@ChinuaEzenwa) is from Owerri-Nkworji in Nkwerre, Imo state, Nigeria and grew up between Germany and Nigeria. His works have appeared in Lunaris Review, AFREADA, Poet Lore, Rush Magazine, Frontier, Palette, Malahat Review, Southword Magazine, Vallum, Mud Season Review, Salamander, Strange Horizons, One, Ake Review, Crannòg magazine, The Question Marker and elsewhere.