Father cuts his leather belt from the tough hides of a domestic animal,
to spite the one that calls himself a vegetarian: my brother,
greening in the dark with bloodshot welts strapped across his neck like a tribal stamp.
the wound’s mouth, left wide as a door forced open:
once upon a death wish, my mother threw herself at this entrance,
shielding the small patch of his loin from the wrath that calls itself scolding—
the way this man pleats the brown leather across his palm in double folds,
& raises it up to break the joy inside of a boy child.
& how my mother surrenders her back to the terror,
without second-guessing her chances of being whipped to death, slowly in disgraced light.
she calls the slumped shadow of my brother body at rest.
calls her running towards him faith in motion.
she, a woman with an issue of more than blood.
when asked, she said she wanted to fix the way his thirst for discipline
puts a blindfold on his judgement whenever he holds a braided rope in hand.
& if this whip itself could turn against a lover.
which, as you must have imagined, it did. although by a sleight of hand.
on the side; a neat cut through the front of her tied wrapper—
like, a simple wound entry, not so much mess done.
patterns of welt, settling on the stripe of her laps in battered embroidery.
we conclude they both needed fixing,
but question the suturing of them as one in the theatre of our imagination.
if anything must be an emergency around here, it would be us—brother & I.
we bond over legumes on white plates,
remained edible as any veggie would like to flaunt its own green
without causing a scene on the walkway.
we roam the neighborhood like a loud bunch of flourishing, swallowing delight.
I catch myself imagining my mother as one with us:
a majority, pushing our way towards the heavens.
her torn wrapper, like spear grass pressed on the boulevard in that hot, bright noon.
let’s assume it was only a tear. say, it blossomed into a wildfire
that cannot be tolerated—so, we uproot her from the ground,
& rushed her out of light’s burning sight, to make the suffering bearable.
indoor, a yam stick fashioned as a trellis for her to learn her walk-steps afresh,
like a child staggering towards redemption. a black gourd laid by the corner,
ridden of its own beverage but still holding the foamy thickness of her bleeding.
one enters this room & suffers second-hand embarrassment.
so, I go in with my back turned as if to surrender to a whip, feigning memory loss.
I wring myself clean of the incidence—the way a braided rope knots its thread into a strangle.
I know the thin line between death & discipline.
I know a faith in motion that got killed by its own speed.
I slant the side of my body to meet both the whip & my mother halfway:
a small, rehearsed entry.
the next day, she wakes up without a welt on her back.
look, there will be a time you too will have to slide your own body
in between a conflict, to intercede on death’s behalf.
I hope that day finds you with more than a loin to spare.
Click here to read Nnadi Samuel on the origin of the poem.
Image by Annie Spratt on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
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