Self-portrait As Obsession

I am singing of alluvial spaces & the

              diagraming of what my obsession

should look like— I am drawn to faint-hearted

              things. I am drawn to people that

need fixing. One time, a girl asked me why I

             almost never liked Christmas—

And maybe there was nothing wrong with

              a false talk like that, but that is no

way to sing of it. To tell it, like the drip-drop

             of blood pattering down the wooden

floorboard— Christmas meant everyone

              was happy, & there would be more

torn gifts than opened wounds. How else

              can I exist in your mind? How else

do I tame the obsession when we are built

           like the blades of ceiling fans: splayed

widely apart in pursuit of nothing & something.

               I wanted to tell you how it was

I made the music from the gallons of blood

              in my body. How it was I longed for

a touch I didn't know was not there. Obsession

             is that knock-knock joke you tell to

your friends in the bar; only, its never a joke.

         Its never a joke that the coneflowers are

bowing away in silence. It's never a joke that

               you can only repair what you love.

Forget what the therapist says, you can only

         fix your past if you love your past enough.

Chisel

i see it circling around your eyes. it wasn't the
lightning that felled you, but the seeds of hope 

you were to father. there are tears a man must
weep for himself, and it must be unaccompanied 

by the solo tune of his mother. i am fetching.
fetching tomorrow under the eye of the moon.

 but how can the moon betray tomorrow so?
rearing the shadow of the earth of every winged 

thing. within every fondling is a thing i adore. like
this memory of myself, unruffled and barefaced.  

a man must, for his sake, make a home from the
ruins of his dead and music the living—this is the 

silent ratification of burial ceremonies a man
nurses in the bedded hinge of his bones. perhaps 

only Nietzsche understood the real pain of men.
the rune he sang: God is dead./ God remains  

dead./ And we have killed him./ is there a dull
pain i am revisiting when God looks away? the  

sadness i feel today, is not my own. this gloom is
somebody else's. how can i awake to the same 

bedfellow robed in hides of darkness? is this me?
the one who must walk every mile with this much 

beauty. does death not run amok along every
road with jasmines and landmines? tell me, o 

good pugilist. to what memory can i bury this lake
of tears? must i bend the chisel's way at each point?

To Sit in A Room & Talk About Fixing Things

Is to remember & have faith in those who have
never lost their accents. Growing up, I was so bad 

at many things. I was bad at math, singing, throwing
& even catching. Until one day, my grandfather said: 

if you can't catch a thing, then do something with your
ears. Sometimes I try to catch a joke from a conversation 

before the joke comes around the room. Other times,
it is not that I do not know the weight of sadness things 

carry, it's just that I am too busy wanting to please others
I forget that the bouncing of one sound to the other 

is what blankets are to rain. I have spent all my life
in confinements I make with my own hands— 

Half the time, I talk about doing things than actually
doing them— for example, I talk about weeding the 

garden, but never doing it. I talk about yanking brokenness
from my tongue, but it turns out I still like its shards 

in my dentin. In history class, the teacher says Mungo Park
discovered the source of the river Niger, I tell my friends 

I will tell him about the fishermen from Nnewi who fished
there before Park's arrival; I never do it, & maybe that's why 

history stays the same— maybe because we talk more
about fixing it, than actually fixing it. Just like I am thinking  

of fixing a line in this poem. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't.

Author’s Biography

Prosper C. Ìféányí writes from Lagos, Nigeria. His works are featured or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Transition, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere.