Refugees’ Testament & In my Family, Grief Keeps Biting our Eyes

JEREMY T. KARN

REFUGEES’ TESTAMENT

 “…the Ghanaian National Police raided the camp and took away over 800 women and children to an unknown destination.’’

 —Melissa Chea-Annan

in Accra, baba said it wasn’t safe

to say you’re a Liberian—

the day we heard the camp was raided,

we buried baba’s memories like the way

we had buried bodies in muds

 

[it was wise to embrace his death that way]

it’s hard to imagine that my baba crawled in rough grasses,

his shirt taking share of the blood on their blades

he, too, was scared to die in a foreign country

but before baba left the three years old me to be eaten by the war,

my uncle’s voice rattled with

the sounds of prison key in Accra

the peelings of his skin on the prison’s floor were

like the many prayers we said for him.

 

IN MY FAMILY, GRIEF KEEPS BITING OUR EYES

for aunt liz,

no one knows how much grief weighs

until it enters the body

when you died,

ours grew like molds on a wall

& turned into a grey paint

i have given up the idea for crying for dead relatives

the more i cried,

the more we buried them

some said it was blessing,

for death to take a whole week to carry you,

to die in your favorite dress,

& your mother fingers caressing the lines in your palms

the door slightly opened like a mouth,

made it perfect for your children to eat the last sight of you breathing

when you die, no one cries,

we knew you were dead long before

your cold hands slipped out from your mother’s lap.

---

JEREMY T. KARN

writes from somewhere in Liberia. His work had appeared in 20.35: Contemporary African Poets Volume III anthology, The Whale Road, The Rising Phoenix, Kalahari Review, African Writer,  Praxis Online Magazine and others.

His chapbook, Miryam Magdalit, has been selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani (The African Poetry Book Fund), in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2021 New-Generation African Poets chapbook box set.