A.B. GODFREED & SAAN Ghanaian Writing on Migration and Diaspora - On Loss: Two Poems from Ghana - Light Factory ...
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2021 Reading the Migration Library
A.B. GODFREED & SAAN
Ghanaian Writing on Migration
and Diaspora
On Loss: Two Poems from Ghana2021 Reading the Migration Library
A.B. GODFREED & SAAN
On Loss: Two Poems from GhanaA Chapbook by A.B. GODFREED & SAAN On Loss: Two Poems from Ghana
On Loss: Two Poems from Ghana TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 Culturally Asante / Am I British? by A.B. Godfreed 13 34361 (or, My Other Brother) by SAAN 22 Dedications 24 Biographies 26 About Ghanaian Writing On Migration and Diaspora Cover Image: Tendai Mwanaka, The Handwriting of a Tree.
6 A.B. GODFREED
Culturally Asante / Am I British?
I am not a part
of this
and also,
not equally a part
of, yes, that typical that;7 8 A.B. GODFREED
so, what is new, And is that issue then a lot more pertinent
except from how than being a little less than a part
I or you of everything
may make it but what the self has grown to be
more or less of an issue. and, of course, learnt to
love greatly—9 10 A.B. GODFREED
even if forgetting how vast
I AM…11 12 A.B. GODFREED
a truth
that needs no part
in so many false divisions
from being,
this infinite,
no one.13 14 SAAN
34361 (or, My Other Brother)
I had a second brother once.15 16 SAAN
Like us, Like pops,
he didn’t choose to be born he struggled with addiction
then he came. then he overcame.17 18 SAAN
But he was still He turned to the church…
poor he turned to us.
And Black
And from the global south.
And just struggling
to survive.19 20 SAAN
Finally, was lost there.
he turned to the sea21 22 SAAN
No one looked for him.23 24
Dedications A. B. GODFREED
To this life
as we really do not
know it.
SAAN
For the thousands of people we
have lost to the sea—including my own.25 26
Biographies A. B. GODFREED (a creative persona) writes poetry and narratives, as well as
produces iCollective Art and experimental beatmixes, which are shared on A.B.
Godfreed Prosetry & Pic(k)s and various social media platforms (Medium,
Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Soundcloud, and Facebook). A.B. Godfreed
engages in these eclectic endeavors as a way of creating “work that makes life
sweet”, while also highlighting diversity and yet epigenetically entangled one-
ness—in all its intelligence and beauty.
SALLY AFIA ANTWI NUAMAH (“SAAN”) is a Ghanaian-American scholar,
activist, writer and filmmaker doing work at the intersections of race, gender,
education, and politics in the U.S. and Africa. She is the author of the multi-
award winning book, How Girls Achieve, the creator of the film, HerStory, and
the founder of the TWII Foundation, which provides scholarships for girls in
Ghana to be the first in their families to go to college.
TENDAI RINOS MWANAKA (cover image) is a Zimbabwean publisher, editor,
mentor, thinker, and multidisciplinary artist with over 40 published books. He
writes in English and Shona. His work has been nominated, shortlisted, and
has won several prizes. It has also appeared in over 400 journals and anthol-
ogies from some 30 countries, and has been translated into Spanish, Shona,
Serbian, Arabic, Bengali, Tamil, Macedonian, Albanian, Hungarian, Russian,
Romanian, French, and German. Outside the arts, he is an avid entrepreneur,
farmer, gardener, and marketer.27 28
About Ghanaian Writing On Migration and Diaspora Ghanaian Writing on Migration and Diaspora is a series of three chapbooks
that were produced through a partnership with The Library of Africa and The
African Diaspora (LOATAD) in Accra, Ghana, and Reading the Migration
Library (RML) in Vancouver, Canada. The project asked creative writers to
consider the meaning of migration, diaspora, and belonging.
The chapbooks in the Ghanaian Writing on Migration and Diaspora series are,
On Loss: Two Poems from Ghana by A.B. Godfreed & SAAN
We are Moulting Birds by Gabriel Awuah Mainoo
Walking on Water by Jay Kophy
LOATAD is a decolonised library, archive, and museum dedicated to the work
of African and Diaspora writers from the late 19th-century to the present day.
With an expansive collection of books and ephemera from writers representing
41 of Africa’s 54 countries, and Black authors from the Americas, the Caribbean,
and Europe, LOATAD makes explicit the historical and contiguous links be-
tween the global Black experience.
RML produces small chapbooks and artist books that speak to the larger theme
of migration as experienced by humans as well as non-humans. All RML chap-
books are freely available as digital copies, or through exchange.2021 Reading the Migration Library
A Chapbook by
A.B. GODFREED & SAAN
Book: Edition of 250
© 2021
ISBN 978-1-988895-26-0
This chapbook in the series, Ghanaian Writing on Migration
and Diaspora, was enabled by the enthusiasm and partnership of
Sylvia Arthur, Founder of the Library of Africa and The African
Diaspora (LOATAD) in Ghana, West Africa.
The poetry juror for the series was Otoniya J. Okot Bitek.
Book design by Victoria Lum with Lois Klassen.
Printed by The Printing House, Vancouver.
Light Factory Publications is grateful to produce artists books
on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəyəm
(Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlílwətaʔɬ
(Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. www.lightfactorypublications.com
Reading the Migration Library is a publication project initiated by
Lois Klassen in 2016. This project would not be possible without
the financial support of the BC Arts Council and Canada Council
for the Arts.2021 Reading the Migration Library
GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
We are Moulting BirdsA Chapbook by GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO We are Moulting Birds
We are Moulting Birds TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 Currency for the labourers 7 Talking—journeys 8 Mushroom shade 9 A voyager’s footprints 10 The ritual that makes her stay 12 Going—airport blues 14 Adventure, blood culture & familiarity 15 Wherever your passport falls 16 Migratory wings 18 Gone—harbour blues 19 A poem in exile 20 Displaced 23:18 at Waterloo terminus 21 We are moulting birds I 22 We are moulting birds II 23 The great halt 24 We don’t get muscular in large numbers 26 Acknowledgement 28 Biographies 30 About Ghanaian Writing On Migration and Diaspora Cover Image: Tendai Mwanaka, The Handwriting of a Tree.
6 GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
Currency for the labourers
We hoist relics;
nail bones, tales,
trinkets of ivory
bracelets—aromas,
street names on
our collar bone.
Conventions of clans.
Dump the weight
in the rust of
border bars.
For new records.
Work permits.
The clearance
of allegiance.
For new names.
We deposit
shells for stones.
Cowries for
green cards. The
mines, for factories,
For grape plantations.
For nursing homes.7 8 GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
Indigenes of war Talking—journeys
forced upon ourselves.
We dump April what these places are like is
mangoes for drought. what the topography of my memory is like
Sound home for when i dig behind footprints. despite
hurricanes. the distance between cliffs & waterfalls.
For gun-chorales. grandfather tells me it is the same
body of sea that meets us everywhere.
As we dig trenches it’s fine, if the water forgets
of gas lines from the keys to the house.
pole to pole, it’s an ultimatum to say i must survive here.
sapphires pass through last morning, sheriffs yanked Melissa
our pockets like out of the wood cottage in Great Marlborough.
wind. So, we bury mortgage arrears, subpoena, elapsed taxes,
our shovels plummeting rents; fine strand of words
dressed in the regalia of legalities.
and auction for us life doesn’t stop… it
our necks for simply gets quiet like ocean
dust. Understanding it choked-in-silent morphemes;
is the sanctuary of it only continue in new ways. because
our remains. We we have water to remind us
will preserve emaciated we can turn at all places.
spines with herb, and when the torrents are
sow them for departing we won’t be here
years. Chant down punching back-hand
the tribes of in palm—kneeling for citizenship
rain & we will
grow new nations.9 10 GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
Mushroom shade A voyager’s footprints
how broad is your citadel for shield ? childhood dream
now I plant it
we have gazed at the dollar for long & in snow
you feel we are hungry? the way we stare
into your trashcans? & lick the blood-clot
from our broken lips? the mould is train station-
surrounding our bones. spreading to I step out
fresh dreams creeping up on the sternum. to return home
it is sunset in New York &
dust beneath
feet of wanderers hardship climax
are sinking into the grass. orphans. a black man chilling vinegar
feet with no owners & with snowflakes
rooms & doorsteps. the
line of black bodies, welcome
each other into the long-thin silhouette address hunt
clunking against the pale-orange sky. the cab driver is playing
house of exile11 12 GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
The ritual that makes her stay into a croquis of thin taffeta. that while she
waits for winter to go by, she’ll lose the
she doesn’t need to flip glossy photos of me fire & learn to adore solitude like woods.
chin up & body loose, leaning
in the amber of acacia trees.
i transcribe for her with braille. the dialect
of those who forget the touch of places.
what i paint for her
is always what it is. i design
shapes of onion &
separate the liquid into a vowel; a ‘u’
shaped jar; for her migraine & choked nose.
her graduation day on the 6th floor,
i’ve imagined her making hard living
in Ohio. i trace the staircases, for her climb.
the bushes are more bearded in April,
her 6 acres sugar cane plantation, she
may miss the path. for assurance, look
into old maps & computers
make a GPS for her ease. capture
the warm laughter of her children13 14 GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
Going—airport blues Goat cheese, scoopful of chocolate mousse
topped with a dollop of whipped cream &
First your mother is leaving, a sprinkling of shaved almonds. This is how
you cry & then beg the aviator.
Lifting a dead cat from she understands the sweet-tongue of your father;
the women who nailed him to the wall, & the
the red sack, kiss it in the paws & delight to dally in 2 worlds at the same time.
slip a prayer on the runway.
Feet are gathering on the metal bird. For
this trip she yearns to know more. Onigiri,
chardonnay, wet pasta, pop magazines
makes her not disremember the flavor of Adowa.
Home is graffiti on broad pillows, remembrances
morphing themselves in your sleep; the sketch,
the slow shuffling gait of your mother, as she
drags herself to the barn door, not allowing
earth to breathe. Contemplating;
legumes or amaranth or black-eyed pea. & She
chows down
up with a tongue in Ottawa, licking
the bliss dribbling down the maple bough.15 16 GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
Adventure, blood culture & familiarity Wherever your passport falls
And you throw yourself at airport
into the shebeen, smelling we burry all
like spider plant & dry our secret names
leaves of powdered okra.
you crane your eyes around
the dark room. in the sunset-
perennial darkness. you feel the complexion of home
who your brothers are on our bodies
how they smell, the
occupied places in their
cranium; dirty beaches, dead phone contacts-
cockroaches sheltered in the strength of spare feet
saline swamp & shit & in case
moldy water. & you
love them for their
distinct cologne. portmanteau
yesterday we had our all the relics
bodies washed in between two worlds
the ancient semen. the
way you smell like me.
i cannot see you but
you guffaw & i remember
this voice—the baptism
at the Nile.17 18 GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
Migratory wings on our heads, listening to talking toads
on the terrace. I hum along. You would pierce me
Sometime in exile feverish bodies would toss with laughter for withholding my feminine voice.
themselves on the towering shrubs &
In America you try to fly away from bedlams
wish the basil would drain the leech striving to make a home out of nothingness
out of their skins, for wind to but the wings deny you; watch fireflies
through the louvers. Leaping stars on earth.
adopt them as birds. Hot cheeks blazing vermillion
beneath face shields. A temperature of kiln clouds
churning under the feet of a sister; experimenting
compound names
H2O, C-o-v-i-d-19-20-21-22. . . vaccines.
It’s hard to grow her own food, hard to
trust the soil, reject 70 dollars, find
mating partner on 7th Street Avenue.
It’s hard to seek closure on zoom without hugs.
KK is waiting at Accra bus station,
offering the last piece of cigarette.
During former reunions, you talked about
Walmart, racism, Jamaica, & the drastic drop
in tobacco prices. Night would spread its pavilion19 20 GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
Gone—Harbour blues A poem in exile
This scent; the torrent that dragged At dUsk,
father’s hair on the sea. The over the bOrder
smell is washing itself in the water. He the gaUnt moon
crumblEd into stars.
carried white calico, dried almonds, kola nuts, glittering shArds
his wearied tyre sandals; waiting the apocalypse quIetly plunge themselves
into the frOst.
kente. Wrapped we wAke
into the blue threadbare portmanteau. His from the nIghtmare
with frigid fingErs &
rotten lantern for Cincinnati, a city deAd fireflies
too dark for black bodies. A in oUr palms.
shilling, a muscle, for good beer. Calabash
for taste of home. Bread.
The only thing cheap for journeys-
nostalgia. Remembering all good names; 22
hours to the train station, eating
the last square, recalling complexion of
benevolent hands;
the soothing weight on his neck.21 22 GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
Displaced 23:18 at Waterloo terminus We are moulting birds I
This is where we leave the mother shrieks, inflated with apology/ ‘‘wait for the stars to take
part of home we cannot lift their place in her mouth’’ but father would replace stone-salt with
beneath the trench of railways. my milk tooth/ i heard his supplications on the yoyi farm/ praying
for a white boy & naming him after a street in Accra/ a dark girl
The conductor said ‘‘Yo! meets him at morning/ he covers the face of the sun with a wave/
there’s no room for you here’’ catapulting her to a place/ where sunlight leans across the water/ in
it you picture yourself in Brazil, distinct—behind the samba flailing
but I see the empty spaces, your arms
on the train
filled with dead tickets, on the shores where a boy with huge enamel juggles many moons
on his sole/ somewhere Nebraska a brown brother maintains his
sweat, dirt, crushed discrete identity/ although places shred & wear greener boughs/
pieces of hamburgers & since 1885 no hoary head spewed out the kola nut/ but my father
they give back my stare. has converted 7 times/ maybe once more, after making me respond
to bom-dia!/ after enstooling me king in the men/ after immersing
Something makes you my gill in the/ caliphate’s prayer, after/ the proclamation of the
want to tell me to raise my flag Hammurabi/
but you cannot see
because you do not see me &
you wag your head at me in
high-tidal-wave motion.23 24 GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
We are moulting birds II The great halt
Let’s take my Afro-Caribbean father for example/ he embroiders the
dark children with his grey fur/ cloning their limbs out of copaiba/ i quarantine
tell him this hinge does not hold flame to a static Caribbean calypso. homes turn into
he beats the woman out of me/ hurling my nape against the wedge/ houses
a room trimmed, heavy like the weight of a jab/ i shout Jesus but he
quenches the miracle/ he says Jesus can live everywhere, not here/ he
says our factions repel/ in his eyes history is shredding/ the brown
feathers rattle against ancestral bones/ reminding him how even arrival confetti
dead things can submerge/ flying back home
on a paper plane
imagine the sea runs to you/ floating fragments; jawbones, names,
birthmarks revealing the peculiar markings on your father/ the
mystery, relics, coming alive, gurgling towards your heels—won-
dering, about the people—like you/who lost their things, forcibly the long conversation
wore a name, gender/ a body named after a bird, a bird named after a with the train window
river/ the rightful angle to name a twisted gender/ stand & discover quarantine rain
a missing language/ for these findings, in the crossways tadpoles
clash their voices behind 10,000 tongues/ contemplating where to
plant this abdicated body/
family reunion
part of me absent
in the aroma25 26 GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO We don’t get muscular in large numbers Leave out the towering palm trees swaying their slender trunks on the wall imitating the skeleton of black boys. Begin counting through the heat, curling over the pale black pot reddening the dainty blotches on mother’s femur; on her delicate wall cold bodies revive their warmth after the final spin of her wrist. On the warm ladle, Kwame Bronze, Adele, Beatrix, Sandema = one mouth. Sucking the teeth of 1000 bodies & their cavity. /Inside a pub in Denver, a white kid shows us his tiny automatic-pistol requesting a portfolio of allegiance/ We sing anthems, each beginning & ending with our lover’s names. But he did not believe us. Brave black boys bitten by bearded pumpkin. Angola, rupee, Ethiopia, cedi The disparity in warrior songs.
27 28
Biographies GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO, special prize winner of Soka Matsubara inter-
national Haiku contest, winner of Forty Under 40 Awards for Authorship
and Creative Writing, and semifinalist of the Jack Grape International Poetry
Prize, is the author of Travellers Gather Dust and Lust, Chicken Wings at the
Altar, 60 Aces of Haiku, and Lyrical Textiles (Illuminated Press, US). He serves
as project manager for Ghana Writes Literary Group, creative editor for WGM
magazine and African poetry editor for Better Than Starbucks Poetry and Fiction
Journal. Mainoo’s writing has appeared in The Cicada’s Cry (US), An Attempt
at Exhausting a Place in Leicestershire (UK), Writers Space Africa, Fireflies’
Light (Missouri Baptist University), Libero American Journal, aAH! Magazine
(Manchester Metropolitan University), Kalahari Review, Wales Haiku Journal,
EVENT, The Mamba, Ghana Writes Journal, The Haiku Foundation, Nthanda
Review (Malawi), Best New African Poets anthologies (2018, 2019, 2020), Bodies
& Scars, Black Bamboo, Poetry Leaves Bound Volume, Quesadilla and Other
Adventures: Food Poems, among others. Mainoo is a tennis professional in the
morning, a student in the afternoon, and writer in the evening.
TENDAI RINOS MWANAKA (cover image) is a Zimbabwean publisher, editor,
mentor, thinker, and multidisciplinary artist with over 40 published books. He
writes in English and Shona. His work has been nominated, shortlisted, and
has won several prizes. It has also appeared in over 400 journals and anthol-
ogies from some 30 countries, and has been translated into Spanish, Shona,
Serbian, Arabic, Bengali, Tamil, Macedonian, Albanian, Hungarian, Russian,
Romanian, French, and German. Outside the arts, he is an avid entrepreneur,
farmer, gardener, and marketer.29 30
Acknowledgement Glory to the God of wisdom, love and art. I express sincere gratitude to everyone
who became the power in my windmill at some point in time. Especially to Paul
Pinnock, London, Martin Egblewogbe, Dr. Mira Govindaraja, India, Philip
Peace, Taofeek Ayeyemi, Nigeria, Nyashadzashe Chikumbu, Zimbabwe, Lina
Arthur and all members of my team.31 32
About Ghanaian Writing On Migration and Diaspora Ghanaian Writing on Migration and Diaspora is a series of three chapbooks
that were produced through a partnership with The Library of Africa and The
African Diaspora (LOATAD) in Accra, Ghana, and Reading the Migration
Library (RML) in Vancouver, Canada. The project asked creative writers to
consider the meaning of migration, diaspora, and belonging.
The chapbooks in the Ghanaian Writing on Migration and Diaspora series are,
On Loss: Two Poems from Ghana by A.B. Godfreed & SAAN
We are Moulting Birds by Gabriel Awuah Mainoo
Walking on Water by Jay Kophy
LOATAD is a decolonised library, archive, and museum dedicated to the work
of African and Diaspora writers from the late 19th-century to the present day.
With an expansive collection of books and ephemera from writers representing
41 of Africa’s 54 countries, and Black authors from the Americas, the Caribbean,
and Europe, LOATAD makes explicit the historical and contiguous links be-
tween the global Black experience.
RML produces small chapbooks and artist books that speak to the larger theme
of migration as experienced by humans as well as non-humans. All RML chap-
books are freely available as digital copies, or through exchange.2021 Reading the Migration Library
We are Moulting Birds
A Chapbook by
GABRIEL AWUAH MAINOO
Book: Edition of 250
© 2021
ISBN 978-1-988895-27-7
This chapbook in the series, Ghanaian Writing on Migration
and Diaspora, was enabled by the enthusiasm and partnership of
Sylvia Arthur, Founder of the Library of Africa and The African
Diaspora (LOATAD) in Ghana, West Africa.
The poetry juror for the series was Otoniya J. Okot Bitek.
Book design by Victoria Lum with Lois Klassen.
Printed by The Printing House, Vancouver.
Light Factory Publications is grateful to produce artists books
on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəyəm
(Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlílwətaʔɬ
(Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. www.lightfactorypublications.com
Reading the Migration Library is a publication project initiated by
Lois Klassen in 2016. This project would not be possible without
the financial support of the BC Arts Council and Canada Council
for the Arts.2021 Reading the Migration Library
JAY KOPHY
Walking on WaterA Chapbook by JAY KOPHY Walking on Water
Walking on Water TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 Map 7 Pharmakeia 9 Autopsy 11 A Short Sermon 13 Hagiography 15 Rigor Mortis 16 A Man’s Wife Says Goodbye 17 A Man’s Wife Writes Him a Letter 19 Salt 21 News 23 A Poem Where God is a Parable 24 On Dissolving 25 Self Portrait at the Door of a New House 26 A Migrant Writes a Letter to His Wife 28 When They Come for Me 29 A Poem Where Home is a Parable 30 Acknowledgements 32 Biographies 34 About Ghanaian Writing On Migration and Diaspora Cover Image: Tendai Mwanaka, The Handwriting of a Tree.
6 JAY KOPHY
Map
what is the difference between
a body & a country
when the reflection of a man traces the map of
a country—drinking itself into barrenness
every time he looks into a mirror. formed
from water instead of glass
mother says
the soil drinks blood & spits
a child through a woman’s thighs. is how
we are blessed with children
& I believe her. & also believe that the soil
was our first language. even before our tongues
learned to dance to the sound of words
& perhaps this is why we trust the earth more than
we do water—a vast part of ourselves we pour
back into ourselves. or. air—which reminds
us that even emptiness carries life
to hold our dead ones. without throwing
them back to us out of tiredness7 8 JAY KOPHY
Pharmakeia
to catch us from falling through our shadows
into unending graves in my country. here’s how you cure hunger
to mold homes out of. just so we can call a place first. stretch out your arms and collect your name
with your clenched fist. then pour it into a pot
a country that is being heated by the anger of the sun
wait for 15 minutes
and add a little bit of the water sitting
in your empty hands. and stir
you may feel a little sting in your eyes
when the steam rises and meets them
when that happens. you may use your mother tongue
to express your anger or frustration or whatever is
unclean enough to be dressed in English
but English is what is unclean is what I can say to the sky
shhh. don’t talk while you cook
like you don’t. while your father speaks. even
when he’s speaking in his sleep
now. crush cubes of laughter and sprinkle that
over it. it may start to smell like a miracle9 10 JAY KOPHY
but don’t be deceived. over here a miracle isn’t Autopsy
a miracle until it’s done in the name of the government
Consider this
shhh. now add salt. and stir till you can hear your grandma’s
voice telling you to pray for a soft rain that cannot flood your home that a boy has to pour his name
back into his wounded mouth
wait for 5 minutes
then pour and hold it in your mouth till it tastes before he can remember who he is
similar to blood and finally. swallow without having to wear the skin of his fathers
who convert blood into ghosts like
the dead & the dead
I’m told always walk backward
because they only live in the past
I come from a long line of men
who say I love you from stitched mouths
bending bodies into the shape of things
that spell out soft in sign language
which is to say
I know no other way to celebrate the things
that bring me joy than to eat their memories
to turn laughter into a hunger11 12 JAY KOPHY
A Short Sermon
what is another metaphor for doubt other than faith
I cannot say something in my mother tongue
after a few minutes of being reminded without un-filling my hands with the need
what it means to be loved to pick up a weapon to rebel
I ask my lover what can kill us how easy it is for us to destroy the things
she says everything we trust that have nothing to do with our grief
lately I’ve taken to quieting my native voice
by translating the words into less dense ones
to stop me from turning the warmth of home
into a fire that is hungry enough to consume whatever
it attracts to its light without leaving a name for remembrance
and translating I’ve come to learn is not only
the rebirthing of words but also of self
for example
I became a stranger to the burden
of starvation when I read in English about how
my village leans on faith for food instead of plants
is there a way we can unbottle our anger without
becoming the very things we want to flood with our wrath
when the compensation to the victims of a man-made13 14 JAY KOPHY
disaster was not forthcoming Hagiography
we planted our knees into the earth Bring me
and spoke softly in our own clasped hands to where
to ask for manna to fall into our wounded mouths my blood runs
— Wanda Coleman
a half-baked body lying quietly on the ground
becomes evidence of the punishment of resistance
& we watch this still body. intently. as though it will
react to us making a memory of it
we don’t mind the stench. we are used to death now
for what has history taught us
if not the many ways to rename blood
to replace loss with sacrifice
the price for this death is understanding
look at what you have made us into
even God. for a moment. questioned the purpose of blood
streaming out of a body when His son died
but maybe this is because He isn’t from here
He isn’t used to the stench of what He loves rotting in his hands
to say their name and taste absence instead of home
this home is a religion of hunger & dissolution15 16 JAY KOPHY
every day we wake up is a disobedience of the daily ritual Rigor Mortis
hallelujah! and they will ask me—
another messiah has been found lying quietly on the belly tongues dripping with forgetfulness
of the earth. limbs arranged like he’s resting on a cross
with a placard in his hands saying: why I would choose to bury my lungs
in my father’s house are many mansions in dust. crossing the desert. with a handful
and I am going to prepare a place for you of water
and his body said blood instead of amen why I would be willing to drown
just to wash my country’s scent
off my name
why I would pay to make another
border shaped body my home
when they should be asking my country17 18 JAY KOPHY
A Man’s Wife Says Goodbye A Man’s Wife Writes Him a Letter
at the door of a house that is tired of standing using the same ink a body is dipped in
a woman is holding her husband’s hand when its movements spell out that it
like it is the only pure part on a body covered misses its lover
with sin. reluctant to let go. because she had heard
stories that anyone entering another country there are moments when words break
by sea was going to war and that those who survived in your hands when you try to write them
carried new faces and names as heavy as onto a surface that is heavier than its weight
the feet of an orphan child. who’s trying to find so this letter—that reads like the sun
his mother by following the sound of her voice slowly unzipping the night. was not written
but imagine. that a wife doesn’t have to watch it was whispered to leaves. with hope
her husband leave his family so he can be able that the wind would carry it from branch
to stop hunger from making a home out of their empty stomachs to branch till it got to a tree
or a man doesn’t have to hide his family
under his tongue. and spit them into the arms that was close enough to him to relay
of another country. where a dark sky isn’t smoke the message—which was covered in softness
from burning flesh
the kind of softness that
I too have always struggled to say goodbye can hold the laughter of his children
just like the woman unwilling to let her husband go without reminding him of his loneliness
whenever I try. the word stretches and fills out the way the sky holds the moon when
every space in my mouth till it becomes too full to speak audibly there are no stars to keep it company
and I believe. that is what is happening to this woman. the kind of softness that can make
who understands that goodbye is all that stands between her a woman write her husband a letter
and her husband’s name changing to migrant19 20 JAY KOPHY
with salt she fetched from her palms Salt
after crying into them all-day
so the taste of home will remain look at a resting sea & tell me if there’s
on his tongue whenever he reads it anything more soulful than the way. it drinks
the sun to welcome the night & speaks about
the beauty of the moon like it is in love
I remember the first time I went to a beach
& walked along the shore. with sand holding
onto my feet. like it was afraid to let another
member of its family go. & the waves were
clapping at the arrival of whoever was thirsty
for a view of what looked like the face of God
until a boy. chest full of hard water. found lying at
the edge of the water. breathless. reminded us
that God grew on the same tree. where a man
& a fruit. can hang from one branch
& maybe this is why I see men try to cross the Mediterranean
with hands covered in sand to remind them
that they are strangers at a place
where weightlessness—the shedding of anything
that feeds the earth the history of your feet
is what can stop you from sinking
& gravity pours you back into the hands
of whatever is ready to catch you21 22 JAY KOPHY
News
because what is the sea. if not an open
mouth that swallows bodies & returns whenever I walk through the streets of my city
them back to us as salt I’m reminded that we do not need water to drown
that a mother who has to smear prayer
on the tip of her tongue. before she can
get enough to feed her child—is drowning
that a man whose hands are so empty
they echo whenever he speaks—is drowning
sometimes. when I think about the act of submerging
into openness. I only see the likeness
between the hovering blue and the dancing blue
then I watch birds. break out from the sky and remember
that the only difference between the sky and the sea
is that the sea is never satisfied—it is a hollow
stage. filled with water yet it still drinks rain
sometimes. when I think about the act of submerging
into openness. I only imagine an actor on stage playing
the role of a man filling his lungs with softness
then I watch the sun pour from one blue into another
and I know that. at home. a woman watching the news23 24 JAY KOPHY
A Poem Where God is a Parable
of how a boat carrying 200
migrants. capsized while trying to cross the Mediterranean The absence of faith is the beginning of death.
What I call flesh is prayer bound to my bones.
is also drowning too. wondering if her husband’s
skin is eating salt. the same way. a parched river All my prayers begin as songs from my bones
eats till it grows into a desert and end with blood instead of amen.
How I wish I began every request with amen,
like when I ask God to let doubt pass from me.
Amen. Oh God. let this sea of doubt pass from me,
for I’ve tried walking on water & almost drowned.
In Noah’s ark, a lost name is replaced with drowned.
In Ghana, anyone who drowns is without a name.
What is the value of a life without a name
to those who believe in what they can only see?
To those who believe in what they can only see,
the absence of faith is the beginning of death.25 26 JAY KOPHY
On Dissolving Self Portrait at the Door of a New House
a man is learning to wear I am standing on a land I cannot call home
a language. that has been dipped I am a stranger which means silence is my first language
in the accent of his new home which means my name is just another sound floating
in a room swollen with noise but I imagine
to hide the history of his body that back home they swallow the warmest part of the morning sun
before they spit out my name through their teeth
and in this language which have been sitting in their mouths like doors
he is called migrant that usually open to hunger or dejection or anything
that lacks the strength to hold the vibrations of laughter without
because he died at sea crumbling
and became born again I imagine that back home a man is thinking of how he can separate
himself from the womb he was born from because he wants to stand
hallelujah! on the land
he was told is synonymous with something a prey believes
is that which stands between it and the jaw
of a predator dripping with its blood but what is hope
if not a lie coated with sweetness to stop us
from offering ourselves to the predator without a fight
for survival for history for remembrance and I don’t have to be
reminded
of what I lost to get here when I cannot say water
without whispering blood underneath my breath
with hands shaking like I’m greeting the dead bodies
that were used to build the bridge I walked on to get here27 28 JAY KOPHY
A Migrant Writes a Letter to His Wife and I was urging you to let me go so I wouldn’t be late for my first bus
and now I am here sitting in this lonely room wishing you never did
My love
I have eaten more sand than the curious mouth of a four-year-old child
who sees the earth as the tender meat of a lifeless thing to be devoured
and I must confess that tiredness has become a word this body
no longer understands until it is falling under the weight of its strength
I must confess that I smell so much like the ocean
which is to say that my chest is still full of saltwater
I can taste the lie building in my throat whenever I say I am fine
but I am fine—and you should know that I say I am fine
not because it is something I feel. even though
I feel like a homeless cloud floating underneath a shadow
but what I mean say is I still remember that my body is an altar
that my faith in seeing the happiness in our family breathe
was what I needed to bravely walk on water. I say I am fine
for the satisfaction of remembrance in a body that wants to forget
I remember. when I had to leave and you were holding my hand
the way a cage holds it prisoner. strongly reluctant to let go29 30 JAY KOPHY
When They Come for Me A Poem Where Home is a Parable
everyday. I pray to the God of deportation not to visit me and when they come for me tell my people
not to clothe me with a name I’ve been trying to forget that hunger which is another form of death
but to become like a deaf god who’ll always answer me drove me away from my home. that my country
with a silence so pure even the stillness of dead things will sound too spat me out when I was learning
loud
how to carry its name without breaking my fingers
and this is how we—those who walk on water that water is no longer water in my mouth
become ghosts even before we die
& sand is no longer sand to my feet & my name is no longer my name
we drown and become everything’s children except our countries’ because I traded them to the God of migration
so I could take the shape of my new home like water does
but maybe the blood a soil drinks is what makes a country
a country and not just the drawing of its borders my father says the only way to laugh without waking
the grief underneath your face
because even as I’ve become a man with no country
there are days when I cannot stop myself from howling into a silent is not to imprison a moment as evidence of your happiness
night but what does that make us
when I see a cloud shaped like the map of the only place I could call if not unholy things asking our bodies to rust
home so I ask that when they come for me
the only place. where I didn’t have to offer language
you don’t forget to laugh & cry & make any other noise
to any God to stop me from wondering that will sing my song into a quiet evening
if one day someone will come for me so it can be buried in a black sky the same way the stars are31 32
Acknowledgements My thanks to the editors of the following publications, in which versions of
these poems first appeared.
Tampered Press: “Autopsy”
Shore Poetry: “A Short Sermon”
Hellebore: “News”
Rogue Agent Journal: “Hagiography”
Four Way Review: “A Poem Where God is a Parable”
“Pharmakeia” was selected as the winner of the 2020 Samira Bawumia Literature
Prize and published in its anthology.33 34
Biographies JAY KOPHY is a Ghanaian poet whose poems have been featured and are
forthcoming in literary magazines such as AGNI, Lolwe, FourWay Review,
PidgeonHoles, Indianapolis Review, Glass Poetry, Tampered Press and many
others. He is the winner of the inaugural Samira Bawumia Literature Prize in
poetry. He’s also the curator and editor of the following anthologies: “to grow
in two bodies”, “How to Write My Country’s Name” and “Equanimity”. You
can find him on Twitter @jay_kophy.
TENDAI RINOS MWANAKA (cover image) is a Zimbabwean publisher, editor,
mentor, thinker, and multidisciplinary artist with over 40 published books. He
writes in English and Shona. His work has been nominated, shortlisted, and
has won several prizes. It has also appeared in over 400 journals and anthol-
ogies from some 30 countries, and has been translated into Spanish, Shona,
Serbian, Arabic, Bengali, Tamil, Macedonian, Albanian, Hungarian, Russian,
Romanian, French, and German. Outside the arts, he is an avid entrepreneur,
farmer, gardener, and marketer.35 36
About Ghanaian Writing On Migration and Diaspora Ghanaian Writing on Migration and Diaspora is a series of three chapbooks
that were produced through a partnership with The Library of Africa and The
African Diaspora (LOATAD) in Accra, Ghana, and Reading the Migration
Library (RML) in Vancouver, Canada. The project asked creative writers to
consider the meaning of migration, diaspora, and belonging.
The chapbooks in the Ghanaian Writing on Migration and Diaspora series are,
On Loss: Two Poems from Ghana by A.B. Godfreed & SAAN
We are Moulting Birds by Gabriel Awuah Mainoo
Walking on Water by Jay Kophy
LOATAD is a decolonised library, archive, and museum dedicated to the work
of African and Diaspora writers from the late 19th-century to the present day.
With an expansive collection of books and ephemera from writers representing
41 of Africa’s 54 countries, and Black authors from the Americas, the Caribbean,
and Europe, LOATAD makes explicit the historical and contiguous links be-
tween the global Black experience.
RML produces small chapbooks and artist books that speak to the larger theme
of migration as experienced by humans as well as non-humans. All RML chap-
books are freely available as digital copies, or through exchange.2021 Reading the Migration Library
Walking on Water
A Chapbook book by
JAY KOPHY
Book: Edition of 250
© 2021
ISBN 978-1-988895-28-4
This chapbook in the series, Ghanaian Writing on Migration
and Diaspora, was enabled by the enthusiasm and partnership of
Sylvia Arthur, Founder of the Library of Africa and The African
Diaspora (LOATAD) in Ghana, West Africa.
The poetry juror for the series was Otoniya J. Okot Bitek.
Book design by Victoria Lum with Lois Klassen.
Printed by The Printing House, Vancouver.
Light Factory Publications is grateful to produce artists books
on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəyəm
(Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlílwətaʔɬ
(Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. www.lightfactorypublications.com
Reading the Migration Library is a publication project initiated by
Lois Klassen in 2016. This project would not be possible without
the financial support of the BC Arts Council and Canada Council
for the Arts.You can also read
