JI HAUSHI
I was hammered
the first night of
Ramadan guilty
as if Allah believed
it me even if not so many
other outlets for discord:
coitus purple urkle acupuncture
such practicality in things
I could have showered and had
war sung out of me
My other name Husseina pressed
like a razor to my temple
and I thought to lean into it
knowing for my people
the many uses of the
cow: milk butter meat rug
Against the tiles where I arrived
I shouted slaughter are you
looking to marry?
Why else come home?
Mene ne mutum?
If not someone to praise-name
the thing my gut miscarried
months earlier?
I’ll want that ache again
a hunger to walk the evening with
I was at my mother’s
ear while she killed
anything the cock’s
neck in her hand
at 86’s Eid the flesh sacrifice
mutual so many pleasures
guaranteed so nothing beautiful
ends her largesse brought prone
me an oracle awaiting questions
elsewhere afflicted to hurt nothing
but myself She too withstood love’s
accretion by holding fingers
to flame yet did make-up her
face that dusk wearing her body
like sin only soothed by eating
nono munshanu nama
Most of her is since covered
her kneeling pious
a soul belated in exchange
for ascent and clean firmament
What is a man? One coming
soon to hold night against her
It was too early
that low blown wind a worm
up her skirt but alone in the kitchen
she broke the fast anyway
TUMBAO
(for A.P.)
Our sun this morning inflicted and teems
sore, moving against time or a pustule
we may cure herba ceously. We ride its
filtered light unclean ly our physiques a
-nointed like pealing down a pike way. Your
embers are MANHOOD obliged, encumbered
to bad behavior, the labored way I’ve come
to know your body, the season of guilt.
I teach your eye the trick of humming, con
-tact a commitment of pleasure, yours. If
I let this hand a -gainst my back, you’ll claim
to know me empir -ically, black goes
beyond the optic: a roar of fluid,
an appellation for vertebrae, slap
-core of my disso -nance. The other hand
at my black estrus, scented and tasted.
I am a mean thing. We are not within
love but this want is what you love, our morph
-ology one of slacken things: cum, scattered
waist beads, warm air re -couped. Light sieves past the
gossamer curtains I toss my titties
like a pair of con -gas, generous timber
of slap-tone, your cock a would-be proving
ground for my girlhood, if I were a girl
at all. What binds us, our genealogies
a distinction of the sheathe versus the
weapon within. The realm of our conjunc
-tion, a dead Black wo -man buried in
Cienfuegos barbs me, bending the pitch for
all unending gifts. She is sliding side
to side coming to suture this pleasure
of ancestry, re -mind the origin
of your mouth, name me nothing vacuous
so I may go some -where, part that ordered
rare speculation wracked through with affect.
EVENING HOLLER
(for Stokely)
With the ease with which you widen the berth
my words like sequester
risk being too understood
we watch the alley cats
from the kitchen window
over our end-of-day coffees
afraid not just of stellar recall
but cognizance its why
I’m sitting still though I’m not
yet tired yet the frame
captures the kindest rendition
of that secret game we play with strangers
lobbing off their heads and seeing
if they still know where to go
We trace something serene
as the ambulance whirs down Kingsessing
imagining also taking what isn’t ours
a boy smiles up from the trolley
his mouth a vortex of potato chips
we come to no such satisfaction
our bellies as empty as they’d been that morning
except on your bedside table
there’d been a plate of cashews
and I’d wanted to put them
in your mouth for you
as you slept after I’d licked
off the salt
you let me rest all day as if I didn’t
pick the hard terrain
my eyes running bloodless when I stationed
we make our space for another
because in another world that boy is our son
and I love him enough I stand in
the doorway to call his name across the alley
as the streetlights shudder on
You are the woman he’ll call daddy
when the city isn’t close
He’ll sleep in our bed until he’s eight
As if he can’t slip away
in your hand he’ll drop a peach
in mine the pit safety becoming a word
he’ll know the meaning of
After his eyes close we open ours
We make a racket of our longing
We refuse the day to end
ERE IBEJI
(for my sister)
Neither breathed nor held,
those forgotten gods now
proffer poverty,
since no legacy
but ours to tend,
for you to die and cast me
your keeper – to wash you,
to dress you –
be it a casual hunger
or an anthem of erotics
sing it loud and disturb my
sleep, all of time fading – then
rubbing, then darkening –
what you call confession
we’ve consorted: born two,
the damage brilliant; is it a myth
the Igbo buried their abominations
in pots? Long time provender
for the wicked.
Unlikely how generous the
gesture. All ghosts suffer
equally so clutch me through
each parable,
the assemblage of
your trespass:
in the forest,
yes, tender, asking earth
some confidence, idling,
your calm regrets even
that country.
HAGIOGRAPHY
-Rose and Taylor’s,
Champaign, Illinois
Came the some-days boyhood was due
my efforts needing tending
I went round the way to 1st Street
for pussy-talk and bets on the bracket.
Audacities razor in my palm’s clutch, waiting
so I sit with my shit all opened up too
the room like Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy
though all these angels be Black, and calling out the god-head
my pulse speaks up all the ways I’ll want
them to hurt me and wade through it.
Someone orders chicken wings
my savior assuring my fit around the swill, my affirmation to know a place.
That harangued confession before I die
possessed by sweet oil wrought in his hard-skinned reaping.
I bit my thickest lip through the good feeling
rollicked my neck against the slick of Luster’s Pink Sheen Spray
and in the mist I saw my name become mnemonic.
I held the vessel as I entered, kissed across his face the sign of the cross.
OLD ADDRESSES
Sloppily shorn nappy hairs
A half full bed
Stirring above
the seizure of the
washing machine
A junkie for neglect rending
the half empty bed
Finger paint art
pretending to gesture
Chasing your face in a dream
where I'm sitting on it
You as a girl when you
used to be
dancing with a black boy prom date
Three parallel scars
fighting to be reinvested
A maelstrom of Derrida
almost resonating
Donna Summers’ sexy squeal
something like I want to do
A luminous half-light
The Devil's array of scores
Him two God zero
There are days we run
naked through wishing
we knew each other as teenagers
The shit-smell of new diagnoses inherited
polarities pealed into lamplight
Cockroaches giving birth beneath
my pillow
banal weight gain
enthused weight loss
a frosted donut
A chest binder, black
N-body physics
embodied in the swirling of prairie grass
Dirty rain in the cistern
Apartment number five
The darkness of my eyes
About the Author:
Chekwube O. Danladi's poetry chapbook, Take Me Back, was recently published as part of the New-Generation African Poets Series: Nne, edited by Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes. They are currently working on a novel about queers living in Abuja, Nigeria. They live in Urbana, Illinois.
Follow Chekwube on Twitter at: @codanladi.
About All Accounts:
All Accounts and Mixture is an annual online feature celebrating the work of LGBTQ writers and artists. For this series, we seek work from authors who self-identify as "queer," while acknowledging that this designation is subjective and highly personal. Our goal is to provide a forum for writers whose voices might be mis- or underrepresented by the literary mainstream. Submissions open May 18th and run through June 19th. Poetry, prose, visual art, reviews and interviews will all be considered.