Prosper C. Ìféányí
Self-Portrait of the Mind as Minefield
I know voices loud enough to pull bodies
out of the lake. Cities under the crown
of snows littering the constant cone of
light. Imagine surrendering to the
clumsy hands pummelling you in a
stream of fists. A flower song dying in
the beauty of a vase. I am not ashamed to
say I tamed my mind in its dry wisps.
To say I hung myself from a branch dangling
& severed into dead limbs. My mother
knows this. The shadow-dimmed porcelain
looms over my sadness. In that sadness
I forgave my horses; sparing them from the
sting of the leather-belt—forgiving them
for galloping into the field of tickseeds. In
this world, I know two things: that reinventing
his silence only makes the saint a culprit. &
that I am no saint. I do not even wish to be
one, because I think black & white are just
colours. I am a whip stretch from faltering.
My mind is no longer one with my body. This
is not a confessional about how each revoke
the other; it is about how they will carry one
an(d)other until the other cannot. It's a trap.
Prosper C. Ìféányí is a Nigerian poet. His works are featured or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, New Delta Review, Identity Theory, and elsewhere.