My father ate fire from bottles that burst
when emptied—sharp embers I learned
to tread across without being burned.
I thought it was the liquor, but it was
a rage which was a sadness: breathless
as a nursery of wailing newborns.
The “O” of his lips kissed the “O”
of the bottle he held by the neck,
the same way he clenched my mother.
I remember her bloody lip, how giant
her sadness was. How it swelled, dwarfing
his. Sadness and Sadness: Siamese twins.
Daughter, you have become too good
at swallowing fire: throat
exposed, head tilted back like a lover
who feels the air lap her just wet skin.
Daughter, you’ve carried dirty water
on your head and thought, At least it’s water.
But you could not drink without getting
sick. Your last lover refused
to dance, so you bought him daffodils.
Better to have worn flowers in your hair
or to have brought them to a grave.
Your mother was bearded with the years
she prayed instead of leaving. She fondled
her beard like a rosary bead. I am a spectator.
I am a spectacle: my father is a dragon,
my mother poses behind the curtain,
waiting for me, the sole voyeur. I want her
to sign the souvenir photograph:
portrait of the wife I never want to be.
I don’t blame her for staying.
My father taught me the ways of fire.
How a husband is first and foremost
a son. How we carry our brutalities,
half-dead, to the feet of our beloveds.
In the wake of love’s grief, I’ve
avoided mirrors for weeks at a time,
afraid to confront my parents
staring at me with my eyes. To mark
her departure, my mother tied
her shorn hair to a sycamore tree.
Leaving none for the sparrows, my father
burned it with his mouth.
But first, he pressed his beard to hers.
It hung from his face like a desperate
flag. He wept, then, into my mother’s
hair, and I learned the ways of water.
Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest Nude forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in September 2022 and Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press, 2020), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. She has been awarded support from Cave Canem, Robert Rauschenberg, and Saltonstall foundations as well as from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Hedgebrook, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Her recent poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry and elsewhere. Among other honors, Codjoe has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council/New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation.
