Poetry / I Echo (b. Chris Baah) 

:: Beyond Heaven’s Gate ::

The pistol-butt against the side of the man’s head, 
I fell with whatever they said walked into perdition,
Pulled a race out, & called it a deliverance. Brother,
Who will teach me how to cry for the secrets
The beach-wind opens? The fork knows I have
Asked it to clear a way between anger & flesh.
Mistaken these tears for mango juice, I deprive
The ground of what is too great for discernment.
The woman I love will give penance for my life.
There is no thanksgiving necessary to uphold
This ritual of life—or is it death? I am pulling a jar
From hospice. Pulling the pigs from the ocean.
What man am I to give up all the ways to save you,
My brother? In the mirror that reveals judgement,
For an hour, I ask if truly I have ever understood
The ways of men. My brother, evicting my father
Like the dogs do a reckless digestion. A terrible,
Terrible exhaustion, he called it lightning, called
It enchantment, called it exorcism, called it a cry
Away from heaven’s gate. But we all approach
The truth in the same way we meet at the eye
Of a wound. Slow entry, then a long devastation.

From the writer

:: Account ::

It is dif­fi­cult to give an account of my work. I do not like to read to an audi­ence. Because I would rather much hear & see how the poem holds itself in anoth­er per­son. This does not mean I am more con­cerned about the read­er than I am about pro­duc­ing the poems. Not near­ly. The motives of my work are per­son­al, the exe­cu­tion is not. Ask me, I am still writ­ing to save myself. & about my poet­ics, I am pulling from a place that is still vul­ner­a­ble & ulti­mate­ly free—to myself as a boy raised some­where in Port Har­court, Nige­ria, & to the man I am now in Vir­ginia. I can talk to you about my con­cern for the line end­ings of my poems, or my deci­sion to begin each line with a cap­i­tal let­ter. But tru­ly, the only absolute is what I seek from the poems is a dis­cus­sion teth­ered to ten­der­ness & mas­culin­i­ty. I am for­ev­er held by Ethel­bert E. Miller’s “Black Men Are Pre­cious.” Before the poem begins, I remind myself of those last lines from Bri­an Gyamfi’s “Prog­e­ny of Wounds” : “do you still remem­ber where it hurts?”

I Echo (b. Chris Baah) is an MFA stu­dent at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty. A Ghana­ian-Niger­ian, he is the author of “Among the Secret Things,” forth­com­ing in the African Poet­ry Book Fund’s New-Gen­er­a­tion African Poets Series. His oth­er writ­ing has been pub­lished / is forth­com­ing in Callaloo, Mud­room, The Good Life Review, and elsewhere.