 |
| Photo by Ryo Tanaka on Unsplash |
by Felix Eshiet
Leopard Town,
Nigerian Navy Ship, Anansa,
Calabar
Eyen, kumana uto ukot, mana to ibuot
Child, sprout from the head not the legs
The gatekeeper warned with lightning,
Is it my fault the labour was a death trial, that I could've drown in blood & bodywater,
that I came forth rocking a mirror & a comb & not as bare as the other water babies?
I sprouted from the legs,
holding on to all that was a taboo
to be left behind.
The slavegirl whose uterus I borrowed
wept about stillbirth,
So, I refused to leave my wretch in her womb.
The midwife with a dying dimple sneered
at the scales on my onion skin.
I say why are you people of the land too generous with judgement? The whole room of white-robed gossippers play deaf,
So, I caterwaul & the midwife’s eardrums fall into her mouth. Anansa, Eka mi, I didn't know a rubber button could penetrate a skull.
By noon, the White slaver came bearing
scorn & palm kernel oil. They told him the grave had summoned a woman for looking at the horns on my ankles, he said he knew my kind should only be born in the belly of a slave ship. What would he say when he
learns that my placenta has refused burial except embalmed beside his wife's tombstone?
What's her name: Ask her yourself
What's your name: [Silence]
Where's she from: Ask her yourself
Where are you from: [Silence]
In the wake of the moon, I asked for my mark,
Kpok mi yak, release me,
The gatekeeper says an echo will find me,
That my calling will come in the smell of rain
on banana leaves & elephant grass,
on an altar of Nsibidi.
The rainmaker calls his god in Nsibidi,
rain finally comes but the clock ticks backwards,
Kpok mi yak, I have destinies to scar,
Why let me rot in the body of an unaging baby?
Oh, my former (c)old mother,
I froze her eggs and made her home infertile to peace, says my pod-sister, towered by the doorpost in her water body, waiting for me to join her. I stare at her & curse in cackles. The slavegirl, my mother now, cups me
into her arms & my sister asks why I hadn't told her breastmilk is never a pathway. I make her fisherman soup burn & she hurries for the charcoal stove, afraid not to let fire steal her half-freedom.
Fire is a pathway.
The slavegirl hawks her body through the door and I crawl-walk in stifled sobs, the lantern sees me, hissed & sucked up the flame sitting on its chest. Oh, how fire dreads me. Asari, my pod-sister is gone, leaving no print on the door. That means my body is to become my pathway. From the crack in the wall, a black cat mocks me with its
tail: It's Atai, the gatekeeper's messenger. He says I had crossed the line & shut the pathways when I sprouted
through my legs & used a scream to sentence a body to an overcrowded grave.
What's your name: Nnimmong
Where are you from: Mmong
Glossary:
Mmong, water.
Kpok mi yak, release me.
Anansa, Eka mi, Anansa, my mother.
Felix Eshiet is a Nigerian writer and Efik-Ibibio poet. He has work in ONLY POEMS, Madrid Review, Efiko, 20.35 Africa, Chestnut Review, Porter House Review, Palette Poetry and elsewhere. He is a 2025 Obsidian Foundation fellow.
