Editor’s Note
The ode has long been associated with a lineage that stretches from Pindar’s formal address to the victor and Sappho’s Aeolic verse, through Horace’s contemplations, to the negative capability of Keats. The ode has always been a vessel—for praise, for memory, for mourning. But in Migwi Mwangi’s hands, it becomes something quieter and more precise: a way of witnessing. It emerges not from grand declaration, but from the familiar rhythm of habit and ritual, from the personal and the communal. The hyperbolic pull of myth and might are conjured within the mundaneness of everyday spaces like the kitchen, where the speaker’s superweapons are a “worn scouring pad”, “dish soap”, and a faucet that channels thunder. Also, the gods are evoked—only for the purpose of being discounted—as a means to further exalt the ode’s subject.
Nicole Gulotta once wrote, “Both the cook and the poet are makers. One holds the knife, the other a pen. One grinds fresh pepper over a mound of tender lettuce, while the other adds a period to the end of a sentence…”. We make music out of what we choose to pay attention to. There is music here, yes—Haruomi, Kendrick, MJ—but also silence, peppered in with the deft use of caesura. An intimacy unfolds between what is said and what is only implied. Mwangi’s odes lean in, listen, take their time. In doing so, they offer us something rare: devotion without spectacle. They archive emotion often linked with belonging—not to place alone, but to people, to gestures, to songs that follow us from one life into another.
—Vasvi Kejriwal
The Bombay Literary Magazine
damn, ode to your rock playlist
that Thursday afternoon
when we walked to the Japanese embassy
college applications in hand
to schools we couldn’t name
you played Haruomi’s “Hosono House”
I know echoes
I know hollow things
who plays MJ’s “Thriller”
on a drive to the airport
who else but you & that 1 hour
WhatsApp video call
in the bathroom of Club 1824
you locking the door
echoes of Sauti Sol
blasting their set on stage
reaching out like arked creatures
like leaves pouring into Jersey City
I yawn along
I wave my hands
your marshland self-portrait
that gypsum wall Kendrick’s neglect
the crisp searching courage of hard rock
when the beat drops
that strange high-volume embroidery
lifting your head up
every time
I stand at the sink, armed with a worn scouring pad,
dish soap & the thundering faucet. Your defiance
defeats the wet, spent hinges of my wrists. I tilt
the pot by its ears to pester stubborn flakes
of carrot, grate the scorched bottom. Still, glossy
rivulets of oil—captain who, only after the party
disembarks, anchors the catch. Collector
of the sweep & force of the hand, who moments ago,
breached a curtain of steam to raft black pepper,
sprinkle coriander onto the stew. Drawing
not once or twice, chopped liver by the wooden
spoon. Spice keeper, border of instrument & flavour,
nothing, no one holds satiety as well as you—not even
the gods. Your richness is chief festivity of all good
marriages: snails & onions, okra & stockfish.
Ruminative as a difficult answer, you starve the fog
of yawns that climbs the stomach, puff the cheeks
to dim the world. You, who gladdens the pumpkin
soup, let each tongue rise to sweep the bowl & fingers.
The vendor spooning chickpeas over my lamb-over-rice,
without asking, how well he knows me. His ungloved
hands dripping with cumin, aroma of chicken kebab
torched for the gyro, his blade-quick movements,
spatula spiced with all that scooping. Tubes of white
sauce, hot sauce, green sauce, a flood of colour
on sizzling lamb. & Have I told you yet, that it is Ramadhan—
his beckon-and-dispatch dull with hunger, a line
of ravenous mouths rounding the corner of 6th and West
4th, each plumbing saliva through the jaws as fresh cilantro
sauce spritzes crisp-soft falafels—how well he knows us.
Author | Migwi Mwangi
Migwi Mwangi is a storyteller from Nairobi. His work has been featured in Adroit Journal, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. A recipient of the George Bogin Award from the Poetry Society of America, he holds an MFA from NYU.
