Issue 45: Spring 2019

Things I’m made of

My name rhymes with blood.

 

My name rhymes with blood.

A house full of mosquitoes,

I kill everything I find with

wings and tiny and not beautiful like butterflies.

My mother’s pet name is beautiful,

I named her butterfly because

I’m beautiful and everyone needs me

to make them beautiful as well.

To be a butterfly is to be prone to fear,

to be sky in your wing, to fly simultaneously,

the way your body is wind floating.

My mother doesn’t have a daughter,

so I’m daughtered. She loves touching

my skin or putting her head in my lap

and pretending to fall asleep.

At dinner, none of my brothers

touches the fruit; I’m reserved to eat

everything, to be daughtered.

My eldest brother’s grin is soft as

white silk. When he opens his mouth,

the sky jumps in for shelter; his words are heaven.

 

About the author

Ugonna-Ora Owoh lives in Nigeria as a poet and model. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in British Confingo magazine, Matador Review, The Malahat Review, The Stockholm Review of Literature, Vassar Review, and elsewhere. He is a 2019 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize international award winner and a 2019 Blue Nib Chapbook Commended. In 2018, he was a finalist for the Young Romantics Prize (Keats-Shelley Prize). He was recently featured in pride magazine and Puerto del Sol's Black Voices Series.