here i am, in the arms of time,
thinking of caricatures of nothingness.

Search Sweet Country After Kojo Laing  We sleep in body vases. Animal beings in paper palaces Jamestown, Cantonment, Labone… Stars are stuffed animals; The sun brandishes its old teeth. O lost country, dog country, Rivers […]

and it is true, to touch water this consciously
is to be touched by a mother pulsing with the pulse of dreams that sank with paperboats

I am not close to ending, yet, but I listen 

for what speaks to me without voice; violence; 

God

After a week in our house, furious Aunty Coreen left. She’d located a Professor friend who taught at the University to host her. The Professor friend telephoned our house for help finding Uncle, but Daddy spoke to her at length without committing to anything apart from lists of names and places. Even Mama, in the years of being married to Daddy, had never heard these. Finally, speaking in Kiswahili, Daddy told the Professor about Aunty Adelaide, and that he and Mama didn’t want to break his new marriage. He had taken so long to settle, they said

When he took the hand, the three of them began to ascend. Nothing to be done by anyone but to watch as the sun glowed behind her head like an apparition, and the breeze caught and billowed the hem of her loose wrapper.