foreigners in another mouth
most
people think silence is what fills the room
but
the room is what brings stillness
in
to
speak its truth and when
silence opens up
to
share what the room knows the
room’s
burden
comes out in the air opens
up
as
if it were dawn breaking on a frosted
pane
the
strife & grace in departure: the
loss
of skin touching what is not kin
but
vein & nerve & bones like how the
tongue
meets
the boundaries of its own palate (of smell that’s putrid)
of
when we sit watching the collapse of another city
like
in the early light of november
when we watch the camera pan
to
a slow flight of ravens the first
respondents
heading
for the carrion call of flesh
& blood & rubble
of
sorrow that’s less news stories when
we know
it
is someone’s beloved underneath the ruins
when
we sit quietly in the room watching night news
the blues
most
people think silence is what fills the room
but
the room is what invites stillness
in
to
speak its truth and once silence opens
up
to
share what the room knows the
room’s
burden
comes out in the air all
open
as
if it were dawn breaking on a frosted pane
&
then loss marks the soul with clarity &
&
then loss marks the soul with confusion &
sorrow carves the future
not
much like joy that once
floodlit a shared path.
House on Death Row
I
i see. shadows as fish in a sea
of sunlight,
maybe, because fish is the
reason i am here today.
i, granddaughter to ancestral
fishermen,
now fishing for dying stories,
priced out of place
sit on the threshold of this crumbling door and absorb
the trace of realms surfacing as rows of tumbling houses.
i watch the rail line become a severing public art,
its jagged scar divides the area into an austere zone,
where weathered windows frame
the sounds of daily toil
their backs turned to the sign
announcing demise: FOR SALE
II
GRANDPA IS BURIED IN THE
BACKYARD BEHIND THIS HOUSE.
his grave doubles as a worktable
in this space-starved tenement.
soon, he’ll be uprooted, dragged to a distant cemetery,
far from his home, so he won’t haunt future owners of this house.
But it isn’t odd to think he’d rather stay here,
HERE, WHERE HIS FISHING NET LIES, AND THE SHADOWS
WON’T CEASE.
here, where his fishing net lay
in their wounded mesh,
like a gull with broken wings unsure of its path to recovery,
my soul is the hesitant bird, aware the future is an already flawed flight.
Jumoke Verissimo is a poet and novelist living in Toronto. She is the author of two well-recognised collections: i am memory and The Birth of Illusion, both published in Nigeria and nominated for various awards, including the Nigeria Prize for Literature. Her most recent novel A Small Silence, received critical acclaim and was nominated for several awards, including the Edinburgh Festical First Book Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. It won the Aidoo-Synder Book Prize. Her writing explores traumatic re/constructions of everyday life and its intersection with gender, focusing on themes of love, loss and hope. She currently teaches in the Department of English Toronto Metropolitan University.
