MY FATHER HEW OUT HIMSELF ON MY SKIN
by CJ Onyedikachi
My Father Hew Out Himself on My Skin – Winner of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)
& my body like the blue bed—called a man
to existence. My father’s mouth’s the size
of a Song thrush—I linger for his morning rhapsody.
The third time, in a year, he marks my body.
& he says these spots are love. A father’s
way of burning the little leech.
I wear his brooch of forms while I grow like a weed on a fence.
He says, sometimes, I am as mild as the sea
& haunting as Chucky. I relax
and days after it falls out like a nail unstable.
My father is a chap with grass blessing his
bed of pink flesh. He buys his seeds with naira notes
given. He blisters the nipples of
a female—not mother’s—& cast a joke about it like
a clown on a pearly stage.
He pours gin on a skull; he prays I find myself in a net.
He prays to his roots, but I’m clay in feet.
too much eyes on a fem boy.
It feels like night in my body. My father dies
in one of our conversations.
He’s like a child with fairy gifts. I turn out
like Blacks on a ship sailing to America.
My father builds dreams on a rainforest
like drought it dries.
Beautiful. Each line is well woven.