Ours is the Hair on God’s Bald Head

by Tim Fab-Eme

Live life, son—be the myth—become history;
a lie begins as a python egg, cool,
coded, seducing the way sleep soothes the sick
and once you bend like a wind-beaten twig
and pamper it, it turns a hangman’s rope
and swallows what you are or could become.

So, sing yourself long enough to become paradise
sing loud until God herself craves your hair
of thistle leaves and silk cotton, your hips
of mysteries, your skin of suns; your lips
of talking drums calling the world to dance.

Did you ever see Marley cooing One Love
or Dube dubbing all the things we leave
behind when we stretch out for white aprons,
their natty dreads cowing God like Medusa’s snakes?

Rebmann crept into our own backyard and discovered
a place my grandfather sat pouring hot drinks
into God’s mouth—he called it Mount Kilimanjaro!

Jazz on, son, samba on like Tia Ciata
braiding the world with dance; let each strand

be the face of a folk wrongly named.

Tim Fab-Eme enjoys playing with poetic forms and themes of identity and the environment. He loves fishing and gardening; Tim hopes to revisit his abandoned prose manuscripts someday. He’s published by The Malahat Review, New Welsh Review, Magma; The Fiddlehead, apt, Channel, FU Review, Quadrant, Foreign, FIYAH, Planet in Crisis Anthology, etc. Tim studied engineering at the Niger Delta University, and is presently pursuing a BA in English Studies at the University of Port Harcourt. He lives in Rivers.