Thirteen Ways of Looking At My Mother's Radio
After Anointing Obuh's "Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Window"
I
the eldest of my siblings
II
silence is a language my mother speaks,
a lesson my eyes never stop reading,
one gaze, one word, one breath at a time.
a radio is a metaphor for her silence.
III
my father is an irony of a radio
IV
every radio teaches you the art
of listening, of dissecting pictures soft yet heavy.
my mother's is a home where her tears find peace.
V
there are only so many seas a boy
can drown in - salty drops of daily shattering news,
his father's punches and the emptiness that follows.
VI
the world looks like a scale
through its speakers.
my mother's face morph into several seasons,
each day by her radio.
VII
is a radio enough to fill
certain voids
without turning into one?
VIII
the walls of this house shrink
at the sound of this object.
a black hole is all that's moulded,
sucking everything but tear tracks
and my mother's scars.
IX
i still marvel at the raw power
of my mother's radio.
the history etched on its antennas,
a loop of studded stories and quenched qualms.
X
a radio is a piece of God, a poem,
like the wrinkles beneath my mother's forehead.
XI
i, sometimes dream in colours,
in shades of the wind. the morning sun hums,
that radio sings & i remember them, in flashes,
in gritty pieces.
XII
my mother wears a veil of smiles,
her radio must have poured out some good news.
XIII
today marks two months, four weeks
& five days after her husband left.
my mother's radio plays the same song
on the day she finally drowned her shadows.
Taiwo Hassan is a Nigerian student, poet and writer. His works have appeared in Best New African Poets Anthology, Liminal Transit Review, Icefloepress.net and Praxis Magazine, to mention a few. When he's not writing, he's either listening to music, singing or watching TV series. You can find him on Twitter @symplytaiwo
This is so captivating