Mutations
after Heather Tone’s poem, ‘likenesses’
I do not eat watermelons for the simple reason that they look like young girls who are not allowed to go to school in my country. A figurine has the pristine smile of an old man. All figurines are migrant workers. Kumquats look like firefighters. A bottle of red wine sitting inside a bucket of ice looks like a man who promised his father he will never write about him in his poems. To promise is to be interpreted as breathing or learning to break. Loneliness is a domain extension. When he is dead, a teenage boy looks like a car parked in a little town carpeted with snow. If he died from depression, he would look like a boat floating on the river with no oars. An otter looks like a boy moved by how his country treat boys like him. Do you know there is an aquarium where you can shake hands with otters? A laundromat looks like a man studying forgiveness. Dead trees look like dead trees. A dandelion looks like a teenage girl writing a love letter to the sun from inside a moving train. Space, time, energy: I am saying my heart is a militarized zone. A swallowtail caterpillar looks like a man smothering his wife’s hair. A sewing machine has the memory of a little girl. The moon is a woman cutting gladiolas. You can call it an elemental fact but be rest assured that I have done my research well. Dragonflies are husbands who cheated on their wives & were caught on cameras. A southern giant petrel looks like a man who said the word ‘shit’ too many times in an argument. When he is not eating a jackfruit, a lion-tailed macaque looks like a man horrified by how human rights activists & peaceful protesters are treated by the government of his country. Death is a plot twist. Happiness is a recreation room. Memory is a recurring decimal. Screwdrivers are broken boys, like me. After being accepted for publication in a major lit mag, a poem looks like a tarantula on a vacation. But only if it is a poem about sex. The town’s courthouse looks like an unarmed black boy shot between the eyes by white cops, his still body left on the hot asphalt crying for home. You want me to tell you that salvation for black boys begins with the thought of a river sprouting pansies? No, not today. When seen from the window, my mother’s tangerine orchard looks like an Afghan hound. When alive, the eyes of a tilapia look like a small boy riding a faded blue bike. A wheelbarrow looks like a woman conducting a naturalization interview. The golden, wheat-covered face of the prairie looks like a man observing a half glass of milk sitting on a table. My father cooking dinner the day after mama started chemo looks like a worn mattress. By extension, it is my own report card on solitude. A water frog’s left eye is a passage into adulthood. Its right eye looks like a boy afraid of winter. When muted, a television looks like a woman sent to prison for telling the truth. A piano sitting alone in an empty church resembles a little boy running from the war that took his mother. The empty pews are teenage girls picking their teeth after a breakfast of gunshots. Politicians are kitchen knives. Those from my country look like crime scenes. Tomorrow they will be coming for me. Corruption is a public health issue. Lord, did you hear me? An empty pantry, any empty pantry, looks like a dead boy. An unfinished poem looks like a wall gecko. The city’s only cathedral with its corrugated tin roof looks like a woman who interviews ghosts for a living. At this point, you should know that streetlamps are ghosts seeking asylum. When read in the night, this poem looks like a deserted beach. The eyes of a dhole look like a woman teaching her daughter how to ride a bike in summer. When asleep, a red-breasted merganser looks like a woman who is angry at the terrible healthcare system of her country. Falling sick in this country is expensive. In the final analysis, an umbrella looks like a real estate agent or an IRS auditor. When still, the feathers of a fork-tailed Drongo look like a clock ticking in a house where everyone is fast asleep. Its beak resembles a pale autumn. A butterfly looks like a little girl wearing her favourite earrings. The Mediterranean is a large funeral home for black bodies. A blank page looks like a little boy holding a dusk-coloured loneliness in his hand. Shoelaces are boys yet to fall in love. A fire hydrant looks like a woman returning home from a climate change march. A Guanábana looks like a teenage boy who started an online literary magazine for endangered species. Its prickly spines look like men playing cards with cigarettes sticking from the corner of their mouths. When dead, a penguin looks like a father praying at the back of a church. Before it soars into the air, an aeroplane looks like a schoolboy mourning the loss of his favourite sneakers. When it is in the air, an aeroplane looks like a woman waiting for her children to come home. Now that the war is over, the city looks like a story made with cardboards. When they are not crying, little babies look like a valley dotted with sunflowers. Motorcycle helmets have the face of teenage boys. War is anything that is always hungry. No, I am not a refugee. But my country has poured me as libation to a god that has the sting of a jellyfish. I mean something has tried to kill me more than once. An old man has the eyes of a straying cat. After being chopped down, a tree looks like a dead baby. Its fallen branches look like a group of schoolboys trying to outrun a flood. Its roots are an extended famine. A black cat looks like an angel. I mean a black cat is an angel. Flowerbeds are a group of little girls who go around saying Merry Christmas to everybody. Grief is connected speech. A shopping cart looks like a man who has mastered the art of convincing dogs to leave their abusive owners. A grocery list looks like a hawk, its beak is an ex-governor who milked his state dry, strangled the schools & trampled on the souls of his people with an insolent satisfaction. My mouth is part hymn, part hunger. They have told me to tie my tongue. What they mean is that people have disappeared. But tell me, what good is poetry if it cannot hurt your feelings a little? The whole expanse of the sky is a little boy planting rice in a flooded field. His body is half desire, half burning city. A telephone booth looks like an old man who reads only the papers’ headlines. A teenage boy recovering from a heartbreak looks like a taco truck. The weatherman looks like a school bell. Any faucet looks like a little girl sitting at the bottom of a river. A driver’s license looks like a teenage boy doing a Macarena dance. The opposite of happily ever after is: we had our hiccups but we never had cause to call 911. Credit cards look like a group of teenage boys at a birthday party toasting to forever. A rainforest looks like a man watching his favourite TV show & sucking on a piña colada. My dead brother’s room looks like a wound. Forgive me. A fresh wound, an open wound. Forgive me. The window is a whale swimming away from shore. His favourite wristwatch lying on the table looks like insomnia. His shoebox is an ongoing war. Every guitar I see looks & sounds like my dead brother. I do not know what to do with this information. I do not know what to do with this information. I do not know what to do with this information.
Othuke Umukoro is a poet, playwright & an overzealous woodpecker from Nigeria. He is a Pushcart & 2x Best of the Net Nominee. He was shortlisted for the 2020 Bloomsday Poetry Competition organized by the Embassy of Ireland in Nigeria. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in Crooked Arrow Press, Frogpond, Mineral Lit Mag, The Sunlight Press, Sleet Magazine, Random Sample Review, Kissing Dynamite Poetry Journal & elsewhere. He tweets @othukeumukoro19
