“Chromaphonetics: I Know Every Colour In My Culture By Its Name & Nature” by Ismail Yusuf Olumoh has been chosen the winner of the inaugural The Babatunde Babafemi Educational Foundation Prize for Poetry. Cultural Daily is proud to support and showcase this beautiful poem.

*

Chromaphonetics: I Know Every Colour In My Culture By Its Name & Nature

 
my body is a fireflies’ temple, & anything that grows here burns to flame.
forgive me if i have said it wrong, but the day Òsùmàrè graphix-ed the skin of the sky
i saw my grandmother in different colour of clothes, hauling my name.
i have phonemicized, in my culture, every colour by its name & nature.
black: a wingless bird feeding on human flesh.
what else can make a mother grows wings if not a child?
she tenders her hands for grace, but they offer her grave.
she says: Èṣù, give my daughter what her womb can carry like a gourd holding palmwine.
let her be tipsy; i do not want her to be seedless.
to language words into prayer you must first be good at ton(gu)e.
that is, a mother will run from ofó, as in nothingness; & ofò as in wasteness.
tell me who knows which will run to you?
from our black-clayed pot, we make a white pap.
now, you know, i have mastered the ton(gu)e.
i have mastered the colour of my culture.
i have become the transcription of my own name, ìṣọ̀lá
white: my body, my skin, phonemes the velar voicedness –—> [colour] of my hometown.
i carry a crescent on my forehead, a symbol for holiness.
grandmother says again: Yeye, there is something running in my grandson’s veins.
oxidize his blood with cleanliness.
& here are my hands, fúnfún lẹlẹ bi ẹyẹlé.
that is human.
we forge absence from abstinence.
in phonetic class, we apharesized consonant k from night.
so i am wondering, how safe we are when the sun dies & the moon is born again.
say: [knight] / [night], is ‘k’ not a constant?
even the letter ‘c’ in grace & ‘v’ in grave share secret symmetry.
red: here, grandma is an owl.
she needs revival.
& i, too, need survival.
she says: Láàlu Ògiri Oko, are you not a betrayer?
you offer me grace & you want a life for gratitude.
you want me to grieve what God has given me as a glory.
she lenses my body, & says it’s good for farming.
as if to say, my tongue is lifeless.
or how can you make ridges on a skin & say it must seed euphoria?
is it not good being a child of glory, a grace, a survival, & a child of black splitting out God’s name in a colour different from his hometown?

What are you looking for?