God’s children are little broken things

Jeremy Karn

— from the title of Arinze Ifeakandu’s collection of short stories.

after a day of rain, inside me
is moisturizing like a plant veins.

i am wet.      i can feel it— i am growing on me 
a body full of God.

this makes my blackness glint on a wall in 
the dark kitchen—with my twin knees rooting the cold tiles.

my mother wants to pray to me. but i want to 
pray for me—for my grief & exhaustion.

ma says ‘sometimes we go too far with living & outlived our
little faith in our bodies.’ 

i was 20 when they buried my uncle that 
sunny wednesday's morning.

five years later,          i want to disappear from this fear. 
oh Yeshua, may we not die with a smile of failure & grief.

Jeremy T. Karn’s chapbook, Miryam Magdalit, was selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the New Generation African Poet (African Poetry Book Fund), 2021. His works appeared and forthcoming in Olney Magazine, Hoxie Gorge Review, Ghost Heart Literary Journal, Whale Road, IceFloe Press, Lolwe, FERAL Poetry, Kissing Dynamite, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Olongo Africa, trampset, Auto Focus Lit, Afro Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the 2020 winner of the ARTmosterrific editor choice award. He tweets @jeremy_karn96