we idolized the neighbor who had television
before us. when he was on screens we checked
for blood stains on his doormat. which common
god ever appeared in places at once? but this is
not a must-tell-story of Nineveh where the lance
of the sun slits my throat & forces out like
the widow who shoved the love letters from the
cabinet & ushered a cat into her husband’s absence.
it seems everyone’s tragic story gets better after
some time. but we don’t forget ours like the night
whose window opens with mosquitoes spitting
bayonets. if James Baldwin was alive he’d
insecticide them all or Mandela, or Nkrumah or
Lumumba. the last time i saw Johnson-Sirleaf
was in my own eyes, in the mirror, i was the plum
lining illuminating her sassy lips. this made her
sentences smelled like the complexion of my
poems, the immortal blood of burnt honey,
glory-thick like spiritual negro songs. i still
remain the second class song poured on live wire.
if you like to know how many sprints it takes
to be free, let’s stop by Fort Erie & Queenston,
spend a night in the muddy gap in-between the
name Chloe & Cooley. in her days you’d label
it slavery. something must be done about this
dark baptism all in the parody of rejuvenation.
racism must be hanged before it grows another
wisdom tooth out of nouns. i say this;
my brother sucks his teeth & swipes a left jab
into the ribcage of the cigarette smoke; meaning;
that is his agenda too. don’t you also believe
heroism begins after death? don’t you want
to leave this inferno & become a street light
in the bloody corners of poems? don’t you want
to dream of Maya Angelou reengineering all your
prayers into the sweet heartbeat of a blaq robin?
don’t you? this is not a flowering ballad where
i write to celebrate America-Africa-Russia as lovers;
i know they love each other in more than poems.
my vicar neighbor is not the problem because he
drinks lot. but not as bad like the way Bukowski
pitied himself. the problem is, in tipsy foggy-mode
he knocks on another person’s door all the time &
says hey Jesus, hey Jesus, hey hey Jesus. i open
the back door & find a council of tulips frowned
upon my presence. i chuckle. they are not my
business. come in; Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin,
this is where your names morph into a life jacket
on the banks of Mississippi, Louis Armstrong,
i swallow the nearness of you like a pill & seal
my bowels because when the saints go marching
for war, you sail me to the sunny side of the
street. hey Jesus, hey Jesus, hey hey Jesus.
Gabriel Awuah Mainoo is a Ghanaian creative practitioner. He has received fellowships from the Hong Kong Baptist University, Aarhus Literature Center in Denmark, the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora and Wintertuin Curacao, in the Netherlands. Mainoo is the author of “Wherever the Sea Spits You”, 2024, (Forlaget Silkerfyret, Denmark), ‘‘Lyrical Textiles’’ (Illuminated Press, US), ‘‘We are Moulting Birds’’ (Light Factory Publication, Canada), & others. His awards include the 2021 Africa Haiku Prize, the 2022 Singapore Poetry Prize, the 2022 Ghana Association of Writers Literary Awards (Poetry), the 2022 Samira Bawumia Literature Prize (poetry), The 1st Wanjohi Prize for African Poetry and others. Mainoo edits poetry for Goat Shed Press, UK and Journal of African Youth Literature. His craft can be found in The London Reader, FIYAH, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Fire, The Ex-Puritan, Wales Haiku Journal, The Woodward Review, EVENT & others.
