I
look at the lines
on my palms
a house of god
sinks at the edge
of the world
a packet of boys
walks through dust
to wash their bodies
at the river
they wash each other’s backs & laugh
outside my grandfather’s
house
a boy chisels
a doll from softwood
at night he comes out
to the square & sings
dances his wooden doll
on an iron table
there was war
but outside
their world turns
with mothers
sitting on another’s husband’s
lap
II
if you check the lines on my palms
you will see a group of men
dusting bullets off their chests
—an antelope snorting gratitude
for the hunter’s misfire
III
a butterfly is god’s
experiment with dust
the maker breathed beauty
into my grandfather’s ashtray & commanded
wings into it
i want to be breathed into
carry my memory the way it carries me
walk to the river where some of the boys
were drowned by the soldiers
mourn the ones that sang with their throats filled with bubbles
a butterfly is god’s experiment with dust
the boys, his experiment with breathing
the dust an entrance
the breath an exit
what is it in water that carries a ship
but gags the pharynx
the doll boy floats on the gentle stream
my grandfather saw him first
IV
i have tried to pray myself
out of dreams
my grandfather is the music man
& i was the knuckle dipped in his throat
elegy to the flower crushed by the first tractor
the white man rode into oke-agbo
that morning
there were no boys to welcome the machines
no doll boy & his group of trailblazers
no drummer beating the sun into skin pores
—all mothers wore black to their farms