 |
| Photo by Ilenia Tesoro / EyeEm |
Self-Portrait as a Headstone
by Chukwu Emmanuel
unlike the dead, i am thinking aloud. What does touch mean? Observance? The weightlessness of this idea, like a sentence unfinished, reminds me of the hard edges of a name, but what are names if not a shape to hold. like a polished granite shoulder. or a hyphen like a pulled thread. there is a life unravelling at the touch of a curious finger. imagine failures. memories dissolving into lichen. a life can be reduced to a watermark. a life can be made into light. watch the dandelion hold its pace. its long shadow. how grief keeps coming from an open palm. becomes a polished name. all my life, this coldness has become a kind of company. i, a story tight on the knot of a lilac bud. my grandmother's hands folding bread dough into loaves i'll never taste. my grandfather searching for the pitch of his own father's laughter. i, an unfinished sentence on a stone not yet cut. i, the mourning with a single poppy petal on my tongue. i, the bones numb the pain. i might not mark this very spot well for others. believe me. a name is a temporary arrangement. i, the bare tick of a second hand. i, the dilation of a pupil. when i sight a flower breaking out.
Chukwu Emmanuel is a poet concerned with the grammar of manhood: how it is performed, inherited, survived, and rewritten. His work examines masculinity not as an identity but as an ongoing negotiation between violence and mercy, privacy and confession, the father's hands and the son's mouth. His works have been published by Poetrycolumnnd, forth coming in PoetrySango Ota and placed as finalists for the October Poetry Prize, Kalahari Review Igby Prize for Nonfiction, and Kreative Diadem Poetry Contest, the Belvedere Poetry Prize.
