Lamentation for a Burnt Boy
i was there,
when your body was rolled up into blue smokes
i begged you not to die….
mother said your smoke trail was a map to heaven
i have inherited a grief
i am tired to carry around in my veins
some days you’re gone,
some days you’re moving
in the blackness of nights that hold my eyes
i want to jump out of these nightmares
without thinking about how
you tried to jump out of the fire
Mute Boy
‘’Poetry is the broken words of a stutterer’s essay’’
Dami Ajayi
i think i am more / blessed than Christ…amen
i am now everything
i promised myself not to be
while some words / in my throat yearn to break into songs,
they’ve also tortured me into a mute boy
i sometimes / end prayers halfway,
when words fail to / form on my tongue
maybe God can struggle / to get words out of his / throat like me
all my life / i have been learning
how to teach my
throat to stay unclogged / like my mother’s kitchen sink,
how to say the word / beautiful /
without pausing,
& pulling my veins out of my thighs
but my mother says / being a stutterer means,
i am more blessed than Christ
Biography
Jeremy T. Karn writes from somewhere in Liberia. He was born between 1997 and 1995 but not in 1996. He writes from his room he barely leaves. His work had appeared and forthcoming in The Whale Road, The Rising Phoenix, Kalahari Review, Praxis Online Magazine, African Writer and others.