A Morning From The Camp; The Late Physician; Papa’s Grave – Three Poems By Cameroonian Writer, Josiane Kouagheu

a morning from the camp

there are many gracious laments in our room
& the smile is not eating their rights. from the
other end of the path, you told me many mercies
ago about what our natural mourns will not carry.
i don’t pretend to know the new line of your dream
or what the old man gave you during our gun’s salvation.
& i don’t mind living for my gasp. what i am trying to fix will
not save us from this tide. there is no joy here. outside this fat
lawn, there is somewhere where our love is uglier than the stones
& tinier than our hope. i can lie about the beauty of the troop or the
scope of your heart. i can sing for free when nothing else survives. i
can hide our moans earlier. or until the road recuses itself. but what i cannot
hold is what sent us here. these haunted bullets boiling our faith. again.

the late physician

i know nothing happens when the stars are confused
like you leaving your seat during the forgetting’s battle

with the silence of refugees on the map & with the lamp
of their niggle near the curve of our own unknown guilt

i love teaching the new syntax of former beginnings when
you still borrow some of your tears or selling them for the old

price of your late physician when he was digging alone &
you were ready to send me the meaning of love or belief

i spend a lot of time dealing with trips & with white leaves at
night while my ears smell the length of our own naked despairs

i am a daughter of the land who asks God the size of her life
i come after the last hour — when their gods refuse to keep

the guns away from the cold flag of our beloved heaven.

papa’s grave

i promise to keep the grief in the cell
of my visit near the end of our gaze.

i, too, have left the bell breeze before
reaching out to our gods.

i promise to learn from the palms of
our salvation through the lens of my
God.

i, too, have mourned my selves
before kissing our dawn’s tribute.

i promise to sit far from the ballads of
our punctured memory & plan with the
spirit of our ancestors.

i, too, have sided with one-decade language
melting around our despairs.

i promise to dye the ghosts of my right
with the feat of our night.

i, too, have pounded my distresses with a holy
break from the farm.

i promise to stop yelling at noon within the
heartbeat of our past.

i, too, have witnessed the power of the lack
when the world shines alone inside the
fate of our shape.

i promise to lock the gate of my flusters
before the sunrise of our gathering.

i, too, have caught the length of our
loneliness since the triumph of your
death.