Default Treatment for a Chronic Mortgager// To Beat a Debit Alert into a Child with the Back of Language
Even in posthumous silence—I speak of six feet,
Pa keeps finding newer ways to mortgage our future.
when the bankers sue, they do so in their numbers—obstinate at it,
obstinate at everything that seems to force a name from the soft of my mouth.
my cheek sells the lies when I say
I-f-e-a-n-y-i repeatedly, till it all feels like a lingua threat,
like wearing the rag of my father’s body.
they imagine the madness—a currency, & withdraw from me.
the core of my lungs, splayed into a guffaw.
any how you look at this scene points you to insanity.
dead, the father & son stand as one, rocking a wild cat.
its tempered pulse performing spasm,
thinking a hand would reach out to domesticate it.
the landline chimes melodic, carrying a lawsuit in its tone.
we make network glitch off crispy notes,
yet, the attorney defies static to strip us off our belongings—acre by ploughed acre.
& when he calls for the last land bearing Pa’s grave, we call for his head—
how Salome did John the Baptist’s,
till it was served on a platter.
we take turns in the mourning.
I use the plural form here to assert sameness,
because the moment the rag of Pa’s body broke my defense,
we brokered partnership: father in two persons,
bless be the risk of impersonating both selves to domesticate our wildness—
in the way one hand rocks the cat, & the strangeness topples it over.
light slices through me & a shadow falls off,
a petition falls.
Click here to read Samuel Samba on the origin of the poem.
Image: House by Ashley, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Default Treatment for a Chronic Mortgager - March 13, 2025