I open with joy and they say watch your mouth.
I learn to make something out of emptiness like bells do.
I watch a bullet make poetry out of holes;
the heaviest things to carry are the holes inside ourselves.
I said my name the way blood loses its rainbow.
there’s a long silence—long as Onyankopon’s bleached cock;
as yellow as gun sputum. old as obliteration.
hungry like an empty pill. red as hibiscus tea.
handsome as gravity.
fucked as funk. lit as a lie.
as fully automated as an angel. sharp as emptiness.
empty as heaven & hell. quiet as a virus.
temperamental as a rainbow. dark as the roof of God’s mouth, blackened
by all carbon smoke rising from earth. Earth’s distinct musk: shit & smoke.
as Omnipresent as darkness. as stoned as God. as deaf as war.
and it’s knocking, knocking, knocking on a doorless man. Open!
Sarpong Osei Asamoah is a bilingual Ghanaian poet who lives in Accra, Ghana. His work has featured in Tampered Press Magazine, Protean, Agbowo Magazine, Lolwe, Olongo Africa Magazine, Bacopa Literary Review, IceFloe Press Magazine, Journal of the Writers Project of Ghana, (Twi poems) at WriteGhana.com, and elsewhere. He is a founding member of and has served as poetry editor at the Contemporary Ghanaian Writers Series (CGWS). He has been an intern at the Library of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD) and is an editorial intern at Tampered Press. Sarpong is also a Chemical Analyst by formal training.