Tuesday Poem by Chibuihe Obi
after two swigs of absinthe, i yield myself to the philosophy of grief and memory
for romeo oriogun
i’m always lonely in the midst of tongues
keen to note how joy can also mean grief for the one
scanning a bottle of rum for sunlight
only to grope his way home in darkness
because grief sometimes is a lover’s tender palm
blinding tenderly
in a bar in kampala two men lean into each other
unified in lust both thirsty for one thing a bristling river
to drown in
i’ve learnt to observe these things
how a man’s body is both thirst and roiling ocean
how he can drown in a song or dismember desire
there’s a boy who goes to an inn to find his
father’s body in shots of fireballs
he falls to his knees each time
he sees a stranger’s feet floating in the
disco light
he knows how a stranger’s body could be
home sometimes
a temporary tomb that swallows memory
at dawn he returns to the same
house by the sea where his father’s ghosts pours back
into coats and become waves thirsty for home
i know to breath is to number the dead to mourn
in measured sequence
but how come memory clings this
tight to air like a flotsam
returning to shore again and again
every season of tide