A Brief History of Love
Sometimes the dead visit me. They come in their fanciest
clothes, flaunt Timberland. I welcome them—
these familiar ghosts—& play their favourite songs:
Bob Dylan. Oliver De Coque. Hello cousin with translucent
hair, turn your face, will you, let me take a photo of us.
Walk carefully across the slippery tile. From him I learn
what it’s like to be dead: the static; the mind-eye’s
sudden, eternal blind. When my friend appears, we sit
at the balcony talking about sex. I’ve missed you,
Ada, but mostly, I’m glad you have arrived. She talks
about blue slugs & axolotl. A pool in Eden where angels
undress. To be dead & horny, she says, you must’ve
been dead-horny while you lived. I laugh at her ghost pun.
Watch her sink her body into my ironed shirt.
At the bedside, beneath the room’s azure bulb,
my grandmother is cooking rice. Like Galatea or Venus De Milo,
she seems ancient in her skin of bronze. She’s hungry,
she explains, because her first son starved to death
in the civil war. But I say This is not the hour of grief—
so she pours rice & pours a little more. Afterward, we lay
on the floor, recounting her favorite things: Camwood.
Saltwater eel. Ofe egwusi. Her child’s broad smile.
The bright green sheen of lemongrass after the first rain
& the bird, which, outside, leans against a pine leaf.
The songs play on—Oliver De Coque. Bob Dylan. Here
& there, a new ghost. Someone is unwrapping a birthday cake.
We circle, like full moon, carve a halo around my sister’s child.
It was supposed to be his fourth birthday, & it is.
Look how he jumps around without blood pouring
from his ears. This is a moment to photograph: all of us
in one place. Our ordinary joys. The sudden emergence
of the dead, like lost boats drifting home.