The Ether

It’s more than dishes

tattered with mandazi scraps and grease,

more than craters 

bruising the sky like neglected fruit.

It’s more than trash

gorging itself gradually at the rim,

more than pennies

gasping for air as they drown into dimes.

It’s more than clothes

tattered as the hungry mouth forced shut,

more than parchment

brittle, pulled so taut it shivers.

It’s more than bills

evaporating in the absence of sun,

more than salt

hissing as it breaches the wound.

It’s more than country

foreign as the father’s flesh,

more than moscato

sweet as rot eroding virgin teeth.

It’s more than migration

reluctant as the new dog crossing streets,

more than soil

corroding the nails it devours.

It’s the flag–

a throne left kingless

to fold into itself, unbecoming,

like grief without a grave or

martyr without a cause.

As if the ache of diminishing recognition

and language dead in the mouth of the second generation–

Kenyan-American–

could be smoothed later, like a wrinkled blouse.

Tell me then, what god favors the denier? 

Judas was wrought for forgiveness, 

but the tongue drips dry on borrowed soil. 

What god blesses the distance between father and son,

the space between self-made and self-forgotten?

Cousins call from across an ocean.

They would kill for this kind of splintered survival.

They would kill and call it worship.

Wangeua na kukusanya malipo.

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