The Autobiography of Water by Bola Opaleke

Bola Opaleke made the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize shortlist for The Autobiography of Water.

He will receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand will have his work published onCBCBooks.

The2018 CBCPoetry Prize winnerwas Natalie LimforArrhythmia.

You can readThe Autobiography of Waterbelow.

The Autobiography of Water

& this is how the story goes

our ancestors dissolved & become lilies
& become water in the belly of the sea.
we squandered every comma in our sentences
to make room for children to be squeezed
into that family photo hung on the wall of its flowing

i.

as the family portrait changes
slowly like a civilized truth
like a hand buried under
the skin of lady Justice decaying
into worms to eat its eyes
& then its ears as its blood
ferments. as the light
at the bottom of the ocean dims

ii.

the river on the eastern side
of our country (folded
into a burning cigarette stick)
touches our lips by mistake
it apologized & returned
to being solid tears

iii.

unflowing like the furious Atlantic
beckoning to us oblivious
of our return journey from searching
for folks locked behind its very doors.
we hid our tears & caressed the orchids
on its belly the way the eyes caress
a wound the body despised

iv.

painfully. before death arrived
we met a god that is not Catholic
he says he's from a country
not known to the atlas on our palms.
he would eat our confessions later
like the same god drawn
on our kindergarten workbook
wearing white beards.

v.

weren't we told a song does not
have to walk when it can fly? to us
only a requiem & dirges
have wings like vulture's
only they can hover over our grief
like a shark over its meat.

vi.

this ferocious crocodile inside
the black gold inside the Delta mangroves
turned to an epidemic chased us up north
to the lonely villages to Chibok & Dapchi
where young girls that embraced
morning sunshine at night deliquesced
into dusty lamentation into regrets
too heavy on our aching shoulders.

vii.

like them we too have no tongues
of our own. when they brought us
white dolls asked that we point
where the pain forces itself in
we said these dolls looked
nothing like us & we knew not
where to point knew not
what pain means to an ordinary toy.

viii.

though our toy-skeleton has its own
language it speaks in metaphors hidden
underneath the red tongue
of our black skin

ix.

of our black bodies. we knew
we have always been an open field
we knew different scouts stake
different flags on us
like a conquered territory

x.

rudely governed. on the mouth
of the Niger river
on the brink of our night
of disappearance
the ghost of Democracy
re-appeared to us wearing
colorful shroud its melting bones
made of in-audible whispers

xi.

of echoes. lost like a prom night
that doesn't last the flowers
that started growing atop
our breasts soon withered
in the name of resistance
we tied the hands of words
that once fondled our nascent nipples
to the back chained them
to the dingy corners
of our strangled voices.

xii.

& that is the history of water.
from generation to generation
small wars waged against us
become big battles
they claim our bodies first
then our mind. they bound us
to a spot like a tree. & though
we roam everywhere
still like the sun
that gives no heed to a broken foot

xiii.

we become
the snapshots of the Congo River
a widowed blood that died & becomes water
buoyant but lifeless but helpless
flowing to who knows where.

Read the other finalists

• (M)otherbySanitaFejzi
• Canadian Immigration Services Citizenship ExambyNeil Griffin
• Arrhythmiaby Natalie Lim
• Phone Sex with a One Time Lover on the West Coastby JulieMannell

About Bola Opaleke

Bola is a Best Of The Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a few journals like Frontier Poetry, Rising Phoenix Review, Writers Resist, Rattle, Cleaver, One, Nottingham Review, The Puritan, Literary Review of Canada, Sierra Nevada Review, Dissident Voice, Poetry Quarterly, The Indianapolis Review, Canadian Literature, Empty Mirror, Poetry Pacific, Drunk Monkeys, Temz Reviewand others. He holds a degree in city planning and lives in Winnipeg.

Interviews

10:44Poet Bola Opaleke on CBC Manitoba's Up to Speed

CBC Poetry Prize shortlisted poet Bola Opaleke reads from his poem "The Autobiography of Water" and discusses its inspirations on CBC Manitoba's Up to Speed with guest host Laurie Hoogstraten

6:17Bola Opaleke on InfoRadio

Poet Bola Opaleke on CBC Manitoba's InfoRad with Marcy Markusa.