poem: jacob kobina ayiah mensah
The Quarantine
A rectangular room, here it’s, Noorshiraabi,
remain calm. I tell myself in a reflected wall.
Suggestions are entwined with the truth,
nothing from these photo albums you’ve painted
impressed you so strongly as the scope & intensity
of this light is thriving unfettered in a bitter atmosphere.
The blind one, this window looks on & the distant
places of a ghost town remain in your music,
except that every morning I look at my last neighbours,
these windstorms, who pass through the courtyard to greet me.
I’m trying to learn their language I’ve long refused
by your request. First dissenters & their debris provoke a storm,
almost a dismal exchange of unpleasant argu-
ment,
how I must
colour your dream & dawn. I cover
the ephemeral mist behind the walls
in a marriage with someone's tender heart.
To translate this music
in your life, I prepare a corner, I burn myself
& carry its death trap over the geology’s body
still decomposing. I write the first line of Spring for Decibel.
You decaffeinate all surface actions into beehive behind the afterglow.
Being a double at length, your faith is folded & front windows are seldom
opened, you develop in the evening not to gain admittance at the gateway.
This house is a good fourth story. A witness, that statue, leads the way
upstairs. The next question becomes the mode of descent
and courage. Here I blind the next wild rose bushes to bale out as future
for the one gazing at the light fleeting among the graveyards. The room darkens.
I ‘m a stranger now & every furniture stares at my shadow falling on anything.
about the writer: jacob kobina ayiah mensah
Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah, who is an algebraist and artist, works in mixed media. His poetry, songs, prose, art and hybrid pieces have appeared in numerous journals. He lives in the southern part of Ghana, in Spain, and the Turtle Mountains, North Dakota.
