Chisom Okafor

Animalcules

​What first greets anyone who enters this room 

is not the medication, not my drooping eyes, 

not my worn face like Schrödinger’s cat, 

tarrying undecided between recovery and relapse, 

but the old bible left on the stool, just beside my bed 

where my father’s hand can swiftly reach it.

At midnight, he flips it open and 

for a long while, stares at the vignette of the Last Supper

on the first page, as if to crawl inside it

and save Jesus from imminent death

then I hear him recite his favorite bible verse 

into his palms, supple with anointing oil

his mouth, dense with the book of Isaiah:

Ma ndi n’ele anya Onyenweanyi…ga-agbanwe ike ha

Ha ga-agba ósó, ike agaghi agwukwa ha

Ha ga-eje ije, ghara ida mba.

For those who wait upon the Lord…shall mount 

up on wings like the eagle. They shall 

run and not be weary, they shall 

walk and not faint.

Afterwards, he keeps vigil, his breaths

steady and drawn against the long moan 

of the night like a snake’s hiss, his head 

is bowed in a catnap, the way St Francis 

must have appeared on the night 

of his first missionary trip, bent with exhaustion.

I fall into a trance and there is an army of bacteria

invading my body’s defenses

dressed in deceitful clothing.

They populate the islets of Langerhans

slice through the sphincter of Oddi

infiltrate the Bowman’s capsule

graze on the walls of the Cowper’s gland 

and curl round the loop of Henle

while I’m left muttering every one of god’s name 

I ever committed to memory

Rapha. Jaireh. Sabaoth

which is my most preferred name for god

Sabaoth: a platoon of insurgents

charioting into my body

but it’s hard to think about horses when 

my father’s voice stubbornly tickles my ears

and his prayers keep falling like many

little animals on my infected chest

as I pretend to fall asleep.

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Image by Cesar Lalangui Eras from Pexels

Chisom Okafor is the author of "Winged Witnesses" (University of Nebraska Press) and the chapbook, "All I know About A Heavy Heart Is How To Carry It" (Jacar Press), selected by Jaki Shelton Green as winner of the New Voices Award. He has received nominations for the CAAPP Book Prize, Brunel African Poetry Prize, the Gerald Kraak Prize, and Pushcart Prize. He has also received support from the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the Commonwealth Foundation.

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