Silence is Another Name of my Mother’s Body

if you look closely you’ll see it, / it looks
so much like my mother…

the way her body loses / every screws that hold it,
how silence makes / it a sacred thing

it exists within me too, / like the sight of fire eating her eyes,
& the picture in my father’s wallet / she refused to smile on

at 44, my mother’s body / is still germinating a voice / for itself

my father sometimes thinks she’s deaf,

my mother is / overcrowded with silence
that sits in her / throat like sore

lately my mother has been learning / how to choke her throat
with a voice; drawing up maps
to retrace the words her mouth yearns / to say to my father

By Jeremy T. Karn

Biography:

Jeremy T. Karn is a poet from somewhere in Liberia. He was born between 1995 and 1997 but not in 1997. He writes from his room he barely leaves. His poems have been published by African Writer Magazine, Praxis Magazine, Kalahari Review, Nanty Greens, Odd Magazine, Eboquill and elsewhere.