Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah
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from The Joy of Safety
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Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah is an algebraist and artist who works in mixed media. His poetry, songs, prose, art and hybrids have appeared in numerous journals. He lives in the southern part of Ghana, in Spain, and the Turtle Mountains, North Dakota.
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from The Joy of Safety
2.
Doubled Play/Tune
Beyond a water buffalo the earth is pulling itself.
Beyond a largest city the traffic bustling.
Beyond our footing we build our space.
We go straight ahead
and it is two streets down.
I am not sure how long you am staying,
I smell the sour milk left in the metal bucket where
this city ends, we turn left at the next corner
and we wait for everybody to close his space
and cross to the right.
Here we take one foot forward and two steps backward
we look like kitchen smoke around a bottle,
we jump over the gutter, Cool Luke stops
and looks elsewhere, his eyes are locked
with the blizzard, I bend the morning.
Living outside elsewhere in a special
(s e t t l e m e n t ) from the reserves called
location, a chain of days spent in the thruway.
The truck driver
               A distant part of the archipelago is sold with his head full of wonder and this port the
seamen have lifted it with their shoulders and heads to where your end begins,
the vehicles hugging to the enlarged impression that has struck the driver
your cellphone rings. It is MTN message.
MTN MESSAGE: Y’ello, Sundays are always
SPECIAL on MTN. With just 50p,
talk & SMS all day on MTN till
5:59pm on Sundays. Simply dial
*5050# to activate MTN Sunday
Special now
A tremble of fear is passing through the crowd still waiting for your arrival
I join the people shifting their gaze from the fence
5.
I Want to Buy the Weight of the Cemented Woman
In front of the town library a woman sits in cement, she wears a blue
jacket and brown knickerbocker with a Youngman’s eyes, a busybody enough to remember
where she has lived for all these years. I sit in some way to commit myself. I touch her
mind settling to my new vision,
with a mere strained smile I face,
perhaps to draw a shade to complete
my imagination, a pretext for an appreciative
invitation any schoolboy wishing not to miss
before the curtain falls
6.
Complexities of the Sighting
A home begins to dissolve away
within the same space,
a long way from Jefferson to
Wright, between the ranch
house & the ford. It is a long
way from the salt beach,
we design its places to flow.A gopher for honeycomb.
We stand in the past listening
to a waterfall splashing
on your face, its height
we can’t measure in the roomfed with spider web & darkness
we put on the contents of a lost hummingbird & wear visor
& we’re lost again.
Wo ist das Krankenhaus?
He says to us still seizing the map.
Wo haben Sie Schmerzen?
Is it the ear, the eye, the hand,
the nose, the tongue?
Verstopfung. Can I switch on
the light & see your full length?
Can I switch on the light
& see your complete life?
Please wait. I want to distinguish
questions from answers
which have remained the same
size from the beginning, I must
catch the full length.
Paying for this phase girding in advance
we reserve a lively bustling traffic.
With her look I paint as mine,
passersby—the long procession—
the boys & the girls
I have seen one of the hands near the edge
8.
Vigil
Abevy
atthejun ctionto oheavy
withbiasb
Indingto
bideeverystep
wewaitfo
rthemidnightw
hipourshadow
skeeptheired
gesfromidleness
wheretheda
yhasbeenstoleninatress
thesehoursareopen
forabusinesswewaitforherbodytobetaken
fromherballad
&givenitbacktoherfirstlad
Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah is an algebraist and artist who works in mixed media. His poetry, songs, prose, art and hybrids have appeared in numerous journals. He lives in the southern part of Ghana, in Spain, and the Turtle Mountains, North Dakota.