family is where all beasts are loved equally
a progressive campaign broaching how much we borrow, the places
we borrow from to create the lycanthrope, the perfect daughter, the absent father
main characters who walk freely into ensuing myths
instances of base form—base hunger. always, we sing
odes to the participating ropes, odes to bodies climbing with stealth
family is willingness to be cured, pruned out with bloody hands
more theories on superposition, the logic of layering, something to do with the genes
strands that never get old in an over-exposed tree, one body recalled too many
times—the same way of digging, of heaping the barn, of drying next season’s meat
Chiagoziem Jideofor is Queer and Igbo. Her debut collection, local remedies, is forthcoming from Host Publications.
