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the book of jacob II //

or explaining the birthday paradox

to my little cousin

By O-Jeremiah Agbaakin
"O Lord, don't speak to me of restraint" Leila Chatti
in a different time           the lines on my palm
are cave markings         which means my body
is ancient   which means i had come     before
the snake brought language     the hieroglyph
is saying unlearn  everything      you know of
time   and its amniotic  push    once i dropped
a coconut  & watched its small skull   splinter
on the floor    water     gushing like remission
was it an accident         that later    a penknife
cut my palm     as i skinned it              my blood
on   my own hand        with warm (coconut) water?
in a different  time    the hieroglyph is saying
be careful of big doors       to very big places
that only open   to the inside     like the arms
of love or a cathedral    black boy   have you
ever been here        in the time         of war?
what do you know  of the war in your body?
i come from a town   with one  door     open
the others closed   to strangers like a ribcage
i knock   even as my God  now seems  open
like jacob trolling an angel         all my life
have I not worshipped all my fears enough?
in the veranda    our parents' mother knows
many ways  to make   love  to God & with
a stool     stops   you  from joining         at
catechism they said      virginity is the only
origin  of God   that the manger boy is also
the   father to the (wo)man   they are   both
about two   thousand years  of  age      now
do you think it all        makes sense    now?

towing // or the book of isaac I

By O-Jeremiah Agbaakin
i.
why does   every place   that i go to end
up swallowed     inside me like a   map?
i should warn you that this journey may
end up as a poem  afraid      of its deity
 
ii.
black boy   were you not      named after
your inertia?      they say the fire dances.
the fire dances       all around the  house
yet my legs are the walls that never ran
 
iii.
father sulks on the tough goat skin   love
of his own father's   prayer mat: his body
towed back to the dust & left to rust like
a car unclaimed  in a garage of    graves
 
iv.
the  shy knife left a love bite on my neck
when God spoke in falsetto as the pigeon
panics in a house fire  before diving  into
safety    from the adage's bolted    mouth
 
v.
at a clinic  the nurse says stab and prick
are never the same      but leaves my arm
bloodied at the end.  i  do not know when
to disagree with  my own            silence
 
vi.
the road before    us spills into sullen dirt
& absent trees       spaced         like rivalry
a van stood     wounded  by the      roadside
"imagine how       free this country can be"
 
vii.
the man child besides me whines      again
"if you tow  all the vehicles?" I ask. we fall
silent as the tow van stood           stranded
by     the  roadside   like a          hypocrite


a thesis on language (abstract)​

By O-Jeremiah Agbaakin
the first word[1] from your mouth has no/ language. onomatopoeia is a miracle here./ how else did father dig something/ the sound of a gun as your first birthday gift?/ curiosity never killed my cat/ that knows how to leap like tongue/ tucked inside two mouths./ blood is the only language that never truly dies./ cite abel in the ground[2]./ i know how to derail a whiteman's tongue./ i know how to borrow words with both eyes /and ears. that's how mother embalms the stories rotting/ inside the gourd of memory. this is how we lose memory:/ the words go away first/ in a land where cockcrow[3] is mnemonic for timing./ do you remember how you vowed to follow your yoruba/ loosely tethered to your tongue?/ how you later disclaimed both melanin/ and your faith/ and your skin- more than thrice.

[1] John 1
[2] Genesis 4
[3] Mathew 22

genesis

By O-Jeremiah Agbaakin
(for the Buni Yadi boys, 2014. Nigeria.)
1.in the beginning, there was a wound
2.and the wound was without form
3.and God covered the wound with a frail armor of scar
4.and god said forgive or forget if it's too hard to pull both tricks
5.in every poem my father is another word for writer's block
6.the house is the night of a love poem—a caesura clogs the veins of every attempt at speech so that when you poke a word with a fork, there's no blood
7.and i left my poem for it was not good
8.on the second day, god said there must be rhythm
9.even if it takes guns buzzing in a high school corridor
10.and you call the rhythm god. is the war(god) not enough god with us?
11.on every other day, you said let there be hyperbole—to enlarge what's left of seeing & believing
12.and words like omni descended like snow on a desert
13.as a freshman, my Classics professor said omni is the root word for all
14.do not tempt me to call god a pedophile—if there are boys moaning on a bed of fire in Buni Yadi into a surrender of ash and silence

O-Jeremiah Agbaakin was born in 1994 in Osun, Nigeria. He holds an LL.B (Law) degree from the University of Ibadan. His literary works are forthcoming/published in diode, the Brooklyn Review, OBSIDIAN, Sierra Nevada Review, StepAway Magazine, and elsewhere. A finalist in the 2017 Korea-Nigeria Poetry Contest, he has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Award. He is the Submissions Editor for Dwarts Magazine and a poetry reader for PANK Magazine.
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