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Three Poems – Tares Oburumu

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  • December 27, 2022
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essay on boat

 in the oval of St. John’s Chapel.

in the dome of his visions; in the form

of ship or skew, 

the times come. the virgins have been praying 

for us before birth. 

my sister is one of such flowers growing hard, 

to avoid the common bruise, to reach sunlight.

red candles to the right light, an altar or 

alternative on the left  lifts up Jesus 

or sacrificial lamb of the city on the horizon. 

i stretch my soul to reach salvation. 

i choose Church over  politics because it loves

 emigration;  

i love the sermon on the exodus.

                                    i lift myself on the other selves 

up to the wuthering climax.

someday i will be written in white in a black skin, 

tares, name of a flower;

light seeing the Mediterranean boats from Zanzibar. 

it’s monday morning, work hour for those who keep 

to the juice & flesh 

                         of their bodies. i couldn’t recognize my mother 

the sea when the Extant 

1885 berths on the African shore. 

goodbye mother, i wave as poet, the wizard

of Oz & passenger (  for we are the Children of Frank.

 we can either be alive with 

Judy Garland or Metro-Goldwyn) 

leaving with the continent finding spaces in the body 

of a thrall on water. this too is called Africa, 

a ship rowing in the center of all illusions: my favorite colors

when i paint my dreams. 

essay on the death of the girl who knows me by my name, tares

it’s only in naming a flower

                                                                                                           that the fragrance stays. 

stay, lucia, again, name me Ramah, which means                 crying or the shedding of dew.

under the almond tree 

the gardeners love,                                   Stay. be blue like the sea you inherited. of crushed petals. 

& let the scent grow from its root 

through the sap to the branches.         stay. be the reach, the horizon a border town

full of birds.  

spread into sunrise like incense 

climbing steps of the wind to the moon.               stay. gather your days in a moonshine

for me, drinking now a fifth of your exit 

pouring forth from the mouth of a calabash. 

                                                                            stay. like rainfall like piano. from here, my black country, i can drink enough of the season, summer.

i can drink enough of you.

essay on sand

i have to write about deserts 

sanded down the wheels of a Cherokee jeep driving 

over the tip of a country vanishing into a grain of sand

to understand that i have lost you. 

you walked up to the knowledge of yourself 

when you ate the camel 

& buried the journey along with its bones. 

the hump rose to a  yellow dune. feverish. homesick. 

you spoke of horses riding around the apocalypse. 

there comes the end where you no longer fit into the caravans,

when with boxes, or books, you hid history in roots of cactus. 

the vans came & crushed your lineage to pieces. 

sanded down the wheels of a Cherokee jeep

headed to America.

who is this tiger chasing after love, you?

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Related Topics
  • African poems
  • african poetry
  • Poems
  • sillerman first book prize for African poetry
  • Tares Oburumu
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