Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah


Ormolu

Everything that we eat from the oil rig to mortar will be mouthful, will be
addressed with a curious, puzzled look and rushed from the stage, will be
sped with impatient tongue, typified by a great oligarchy, will be oinked,
followed by tears, no need to book. What we have left behind in your
chamber are those letters in which you have spoken cheerfully with my gay
heart, as crooked as old teeth behind old galleys, I stretch my arm to draw
the curtain that will be enough to rescue the children with no parents from
the trash after the fire.
                                                 Your grandfather gazes at you, trying to drive you
to the top of your language, where I carry a small size of ant-brain,
where I own your dance,
where I have been recognized as irregular typeface,      the floor is sinking,
and your weight becomes very heavy in the hands
gathered for prayers.
                                              Somewhere I knead the dough for five minutes
and the knee-high grass touches the roof.




Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah is the author of the new hybrid works, The Sun of a Solid Torus, Conductor 5, Genus for L Loci and Handlebody. His individual poems are widely published and recently appearing in Rigorous, Beautiful Cadaver Project Pittsburgh, The Meadow, Juked, North Dakota Quarterly, Cathexis Northwest Press, The Sandy River Review, Strata Magazine, Atlas Poetica, Modern Haiku, etc. He is an algebraist and artist and lives in the southern part of Ghana, Spain, and Turtle Mountains, North Dakota.
 
 
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