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.