Edwardson Ukata

The Matrimony of Mimicry and Maintenance

i:

Why is the body such a problem
for translation?[1] A boy in mimicry of
his father wrestled a vase
until it plunged and shattered across
the floor of his grandmother’s house.
It was many years ago, though. Then
I was a boy and I used to be
married to my grandmother’s
vase of blooming hibiscus flowers.
My father was a lazy man,
bold, though, like the vivid red
of a hibiscus flower the boy
who broke the vase ran with to his mother
screaming mama I broke my wife!

ii:

My mother made me malleable
and formidable against my father
who faded me for fretting about
a bug, once. Boy, the sense in that idea
of a man being a broken ceramic thing—
my mother taught— being a shame
to the eye, in lieu of excellent display!
Twenty-two years of matrimony
and the woman worked herself into
a sage, even though her name
was Rosemary, on lovely matters.
She caught me sharpening my man-
hood and told me never give in,
fully, to the excess hunger of the body.

[1] Johannes Göransson, In Defense of Mimicry. Poetry Foundation.

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Edwardson Ukata (they/them) is a Black queer nonbinary writer from Nigeria and a graduate fellow in the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis. They were a finalist for the 2023 Bergen International Writing Competition and the 2022 Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and were shortlisted for the 2024 Bridport Poetry Prize. Their work has appeared in Poetry, Lolwe, and elsewhere.