Editor's Note
Reading these poems reminded me of a conversation I once had with an artist friend. He pointed out, while completing yet another canvas on human anatomy, that until Leonardo Da Vinci’s 16th century sequence of pen-and-ink drawings, the world believed the heart to be a two-chambered organ. The anatomy of Eliongema Udofia’s poems had a similar revelation for me — a discovery, an expansiveness.
While Da Vinci’s drawings were based on his dissections of cadavers, this set derives its insights from an intense aliveness. An aliveness that manifests most interestingly as surprise, no, as gradual revelation. In “Teaching My Cousin To Sketch A Happy Man”, we see how the act of drawing reveals a subject’s inner world over a sitting. Consider for instance, how seemingly insignificant details turn or unravel through effective enjambments like ‘how I dress / my sadness in smiles’.
The surprise is not just intra-poem, but extends inter-poem, with the last one employing dark humour to reflect on sexuality. ‘Prayer Glitch’, like the title suggests, is all about the importance of getting the words for our desires absolutely right — a skill that Eliongema Udofia knows all too well. Through these bends and shifts, we witness complex emotional narratives slide into place with the reassuring click of clarity.
— Soni Somarajan
The Bombay Literary Magazine
Teaching My Cousin To Sketch A Happy Man
He sharpens the pencil for the fifth time,
I stare at the broken graphites, the pencil’s skin
like yellow shavings littered on the drawing desk;
the way mother’s stunted prayers for a union smooth
as beach pebbles, lie about God’s feet. I pretend
not to notice how they remind me of the fragments
of family peace littered on the dining table,
shards of which everyone bears a scar—I on
my left thigh; my mother, her smile. I say to my cousin,
be careful, don’t make it break anymore; deep down,
I mean: when you have a home, don’t let it break
this way. On completion of the man’s face,
nothing about it seems happy. I notice a slight error:
the eyebrows slant down to the nose’s bridge, the
mouth too, curves upward & I realize how little things
matter this much, how small winds grow into
tornadoes, how sleep matures into death, how bit by
bit, like a termite-infested log, the family’s happiness
crumbles into dust. I say, keep the eyebrows straight
or curved upward & the mouth, make it curve
downward. He obeys. I observe the man’s face;
it’s healed but traces of the old sketches linger.
He looks sadly happy, like someone who’s cut through
the heart of sorrow with laughter. I pretend not to
see the sketch’s similarity with me; I pretend not to
realize my cousin sketched me—how I dress
my sadness in smiles, snubbing the bitter taste
of sorrow on my lips. Believe me, it is better at times,
not to hurt than to heal.
Bruised Recollections
Sunlight pelts my skin
and jagged memories fall back to me;
my father deserts us again
on the front porch, diminishing into
the horizon’s sharp edge.
The fragrance of another woman,
not my mother, leads him away
from home, until he thins out of sight;
an inkblot on my mother’s tongue.
The stench of his betrayal clings
to every room of the house.
A desert sprouts in the living room
on the fertility of his absence.
And we, scorched things, are left
to battle for balance, in a home robbed
of gravity that blooms in a father’s
voice. Our shadows stretch into lovelorn
apparitions. Still, the body; a bouquet
of possibilities bends
into an oasis, quenching the thirst
ravaging us; our lips learning
again, how to stretch to the tune
of happiness. And mother, drunk
with hope, believes the thickness of
blood will draw father back to us,
his skin wrinkled with guilt.
And instead of walking out too
on him, we would show him what
this body is capable of.
We will offer him water, a soft reminder
that the desert, despite all that heat, all
that parchedness, all that unloved brown,
still knows how to hold something
tender to the ferocity of the sun.
Prayer Glitch
in primary school/a girl/ tries to kiss me/ i/ paper/
she/ dragon flame/ i remember/ in a split second/
gathering courage/ like sea pebbles/ from the
shore of god’s feet/ resisting the urge to taste the
fire on her lips/ just how ma had taught me/
hand against my chest/ eyes closed/ as if like a
naked body/ it were a taboo/ to watch prayer/ as it
exits unclad/ through the cave of the mouth/ i
remember/ the girl/ recoiled mamba/ disappearing
among the litter of kids on the playground/ shame
steering her tiny legs away/ afterwards avoiding
me like a plague/ years later/ & here i am/ at a
movie with my homies/ the kissing scene/ as they
call it/ so passionate & triggering/ but i swear/
i don’t feel flesh tightening between my legs/ just
boredom/ & a knot in my chest/ as if the room
was ripped of oxygen/ my homies find it weird/
how i am never sexually aroused/ & i am thinking
it must have all begun in that playground/ with the
prayer/ something in the words i tongued/ take
this urge from me/ lord/ instead of / help me to
resist this urge to kiss her/ god must have swallowed
the length of my invocation whole/ the way a bad
sieve takes in rice & chaff/ mistook pause for stop/
hibernate for kill/ so that he touched something
in me/ or/ crushed a region in my hypothalamus/
that made kissing feel so passionless/ that even
when the girl i had taken out on a date/ kissed
me twice in the uber/ all i could taste/was the
strawberry taste of her lip gloss/ & a salty urge
to puke/ out of irritation over this silly human
ritual/ of welding lip against lip
Acknowledgments
Image credits: Jasper Johns. In Memory of My Feelings – Frank O’Hara. Oil on canvas with objects. 40 1/4 x 60 x 2 7/8 in. (102.2 x 152.4 x 7.3 cm)
Why did we pick this particular painting of Jasper John to accompany the poems on their journey? Perhaps it’s because of Johns’ much-quoted remark in a 1988 NY Times interview: “I didn’t want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.”Whereas poems usually are. Perhaps it’s because of how we felt (there’s that word again) that despite this stoic viewpoint, Johns’ painting reached for the same intaglio of memories. For more about Johns’ paintings (and especially this one), see Jason Farago’s wonderful interactive essay in the New York Times.
Author | ELIONGEMA UDOFIA
ELIONGEMA UDOFIA (LIONGS) is an undergrad student of the University of Uyo, Nigeria. His poems have been published in Brittle Paper, Eboquills, Salamander Ink, Blue Marble Review, African Writer Magazine, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Afritondo, Muse Journal, World Voices Magazine, Arting Arena, The Sailors Review, Full House Literary Magazine and elsewhere. He is the First Place Winner of IHRAM’S Art of Unity Creative Award (Youth Category) 2023, Third Place Winner of Bill Ward’s Prize for Emerging Writers 2023 Edition, and Bronze Winner of the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition 2023. He is a lover of dogs, music and artworks. When he is not writing, Eliongema spends time drawing and listening to Lana Del Rey.