Brian Gyamfi

DIRT

Mud swallows the beach, freeing the hurricane inside
Anansi’s ass. Or was it the one that grates against his kidney?

There’s a god sitting on a tree stump, the morning
foaming in his mouth. Let us say a boy walks 

onto the beach. His father writing a eulogy to the birds 
in the boy’s mouth. Already, the father fails to forgive 

the sunlight slipping through the pines. His penmanship 
is soft. Dirt unsettles him. I understand very little 

of the dirt the father covers the boy’s body with or Anansi 
who sits on the boy’s chest and covers the light above. 

Let us say the boy doesn’t put a gun to his head.
Sometimes I need a reason for the forest   

to remain a forest and sometimes only a fire 
to make it something else. To know the direction of winter

and the age of the devil, they say, is to trick life out of wood.
But now I find myself naked within mud 

and I have forgotten the people I carry in my name. 
My body becomes a man rough as dirt. 

I run toward the sea to write an essay on mortality.
Some days I’m hesitant to bury my fingers in dirt.

Perhaps, this is the rebirth I yearn for: 
something that will age after death and halt the bullet 

drumming against the skull of a boy. On the second day,
the ghost of the god carries the tree stump 

the cemetery moves from his voice and he sings to me 
a song of stone. I turn away by sense.

Let us say the ghost of the god becomes fire, then water, 
then fire again, the mountain with flesh and smoke; 

this is when the birds exit the boy as sound.

COCAINE & FLOWERS

When the gods came to America with a bag of cocaine and flowers they were beheaded. 
Their death had nothing to do with the president as he burns gods who come to him 

with desire and a lie. So when I arrive at the capital, do I behead myself or cut out my tongue? 
Forget my question, instead, let me give you a memory. Three people in it: a boy, a president, 

a father. My story devours lies as desire spits out familiarity, and still, I stand in the mystery 
of dead gods. No, I cannot drown the flowers. I crave them the way a man craves 

the face of another. It would have been easy never to have wanted the flowers, to watch 
the wretched gods leave the bodies of wretched men, to praise the president 

for such a heroic exorcism and sweep the floors of the capital. Yes, I’m joyous at the death 
of death. But no, they didn’t behead all the gods. There’s one in ghostly orange, 

sitting in a prison cell on this American earth. The cell is dirtier than most, smells of the dog 
the guards fucked for pleasure, and the sound of water echoes in fragments. 

I’ve avoided visiting but knowing desire can soak death like paper and how to lie to a president, 
I’m here. I know my brothers have already told you so. Find a bridge between America and the sea;

we will walk, I say. The cocaine has blessed the heads of men with coins. If I have seen a devil, 
it is not a being but the place I stand. My father circumcised me at the president’s house 

with a certain thrill in his body. Though not every truth should be told, my father’s mouth tells 
a better memory. He drove for days in the blood heat to find the question he had answered 

but did not know. Do others seek this question too? A dark thing that cannot be seen in the piss 
of a fetish priest or found in the many lies we speak to each other. A memory I have lost—

no, it was killed in me. Even the words of death are spoken in the morning. My father whipped   
my mother until my brother fell out. He said her belly was infested with the gods,

for she would not give him the pleasure of her lips. Do not interrupt the guards. Let them fuck 
their dogs. I have a mind for understanding things that should not be understood. Is there cocaine 

in this place? You see, I plan on remaining here as the most foolish god in the world. I fear
questions that should be feared, and I hold my tongue in the presence of men. I have been 

circumcised once; twice will be deadly. But I have searched in places, in dirty places, clean places, 
better places, American places, for the machete used to behead gods. I have dug flowers for it 

and buried bones for it. But the sun is a fool. It will rise for the birth of a god, and it will rise
for the beheading of one too.

LORD PURPLE

I am the leader of the Martians 
at the end of the cinema. 

In my belly little birds reap 
a new kind of colored fruit. 

The mango, the apple, the drupe—
things eaten by naked children 

have their seeds thrown into the puddle,
grows again as plum, periwinkle, chickens.

The morning sun rises over the theater like a boy 
waking or the ant crawling up the hill. 

In the sky 
falls the fetus of the moon and the dark.

Between my mind and the theater, 
a discovery of boneless movements partial only

to the drugged sea-nymphs 
of this invincible world is found.

A drunk doctor lives inside my stomach as a pianist 
feeding everything with the sounds of virginal joy and glory. 

I throw my laughter to the chickens who yelp like hell
and I yelp like hell—

like my uncle from Landon 
who eats doves and shits out oranges. 

Forgive me, I say to my uncle, the deep is my home 
and my journey is finished as there’re no more places to go. 

Luckily, the doves are clouds.
Luckily, the oranges are diamonds.

I leave the theater to color the pavement 
with chalk.

When painting an onion
I speak with the wind and the ground. 

By now I have learned the secret scent of films.
The names of worlds and aliens are still stored in my belly.

The movie days are buried by rootless labors and laws,
the colors become what I make of them

and the Martians continued to rule 
the cinema space.

Double Yolk extends gratitude to the Narrative, which first featured “Dirt” & “Cocaine & Flowers.”