Noel Molloy, Mask
My Father’s Forehead
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
On my father’s head was a poem,
shaped like a crooked feather,
a bent worm, or a wandering wrinkle–
These lines appeared as he wove baskets in the hot sun.
each strand of wrinkle was a stanza,
each stretch is an unfinished line.
There was a drop of sweat on his nose,
looking like a boil or a pimple or a mole,
and a grain of white rice slipping from his mouth,
to stand in the center of his face.
My father taught me to write poems,
draw strings from palm trees, stretch them,
Trim them with a kitchen knife
that has been sharpened on a whetstone.
He laid the strings in the sun to dry,
or when there was no sun, over fire.
How I watched him spread out strings,
like they were jewels or gold or diamonds,
or special gifts from his ancestors.
My father was slow and deliberate,
as though hurry were a foreign country,
and he feared to tread on it.
All this time, my father’s head contracted,
narrowed, twisted, contorted, convoluted
and knitted together like a bundle of ropes,
intertwining, interlocking, interweaving.
My father’s forehead was a paralysis,
the labyrinth of his trials and efforts
to make life out of nothing and restore
the dignity of his labor and our home.
When the strings were dry enough,
He cut the bamboo sticks to size,
dried them to breaking and assembled them.
When he twisted and bent them over,
and inclined them over like a bow,
the strings went in and out of them,
closing into one another, leaning on one another,
a basket, a wicker work, a great vessel.
Only then would my father’s forehead relax.
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
On my father’s head was a poem,
shaped like a crooked feather,
a bent worm, or a wandering wrinkle–
These lines appeared as he wove baskets in the hot sun.
each strand of wrinkle was a stanza,
each stretch is an unfinished line.
There was a drop of sweat on his nose,
looking like a boil or a pimple or a mole,
and a grain of white rice slipping from his mouth,
to stand in the center of his face.
My father taught me to write poems,
draw strings from palm trees, stretch them,
Trim them with a kitchen knife
that has been sharpened on a whetstone.
He laid the strings in the sun to dry,
or when there was no sun, over fire.
How I watched him spread out strings,
like they were jewels or gold or diamonds,
or special gifts from his ancestors.
My father was slow and deliberate,
as though hurry were a foreign country,
and he feared to tread on it.
All this time, my father’s head contracted,
narrowed, twisted, contorted, convoluted
and knitted together like a bundle of ropes,
intertwining, interlocking, interweaving.
My father’s forehead was a paralysis,
the labyrinth of his trials and efforts
to make life out of nothing and restore
the dignity of his labor and our home.
When the strings were dry enough,
He cut the bamboo sticks to size,
dried them to breaking and assembled them.
When he twisted and bent them over,
and inclined them over like a bow,
the strings went in and out of them,
closing into one another, leaning on one another,
a basket, a wicker work, a great vessel.
Only then would my father’s forehead relax.