Josiane Kouagheu | dreams to bury

river is for those who have dreams to bury

listen i, too, know how to hide my pain in
the breast of our river’s greetings+++++++from the color
of my soroness to the size of your emptiness+++++++i will
reach out to our childhood between+++++++i will not share
my religious wave, the new suit of my hope+++++++i will
not pass by Manjo or Loé where we once kept the
silence of our lie in their dawn+++++++i will not follow the
fat morning & its despair+++++++neither the tiny sunrise &
its will+++++++nor the rough-breeze day & its promise—grandmère
used to warn us about what hiding really means in life
+++++++showing some slices of yourself to yourself+++++++not to the
world within+++++++or sharing with the river what tomorrow can
not be, she said—a death coming from the hands of flowers+++++++a shadow
fighting grandpère’s mercy. & just another today being what
+++++++yesterday didn’t steal from the lord+++++++our young tears in the river

——–

slavery day in Bimbia

the road might untie my fears not Bimbia,
not her and her stubborn remembrance laying

somewhere between the height of my breath and
the people on my right. i can feel the morning and

its rage. i can share what uncle told me many clemencies
ago, in the sunless kitchen of our village. any error will fit

you unless you pack your lessons in the late boat, he said.
maybe Bimbia was not that kind. i mean maybe some boats

arrived at night along some gods. ours, our God always gives
us the right cup to drink. i wonder if the slaves here in Bimbia

were afraid to drink from their cup. i can hear their taste. should
i say their bitterness. time heals everything, the poet said. why then

Bimbia still miss her heart? i can smell it in the tone of her wind rising
among the last wall of her history. i can meet it through the lens of her

thoughts resting inside the people on my right. i can touch it on the skin
of her sole faith sharing her words with us. Bimbia was never supposed

to recover alone, sleeping on the grass of their fears, fighting with the storm
of their absolution and calling the right name to one hell. no, not one laugh

from the heaven. Bimbia has never earned a grave, a coffin to save her mourns.
Bimbia never lived enough to fight for herself, for us and the people on my right.

——–

the road they never show

between the two ends of my waking up,
there is a return at the corner of the distress
that never shows its real meaning. i know
semantic is that habit to say it even if you
don’t cry it. about how we climb a mirage and blame our
scent. about how we cure alone and hope to
understand their scars. i know the language
of poverty can untie the father’s sins & undo
our own guilt. at the market next to the head
of our house, the pèpè seller lacks coins when we meet.
i am like the country my sister, he says all the time.
what do you mean, i ask one day. it is about some friends of mine.
when he says mine, read ours. our unseen battle.
our general loss. the real metaphor of life.

——–

Poems (c) Josiane Kouagheu

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