Jay Kophy

A Short Sermon

I cannot say something in my mother tongue
without un-filling my hands with the need
to pick up
a weapon
to rebel

how easy
it is for us
to destroy the things
that have nothing to do with our grief

lately
I've taken to quieting my native voice by translating
the words into less denser ones

to stop myself from turning the taste of home
into a fire that cannot distinguish a frown
from a smile

and translating
I've come to learn is not only the rebirthing
of words but also of self

for example
I became a stranger to the burden
of starvation when I read in English about how
my village leans

on faith for food       instead of plants

is there a way we can unbottle our anger without
becoming the very things we want to flood with our wrath

when the compensation to the victims of a man-made
disaster was not forthcoming

we planted our knees into the earth
and spoke softly in our own clasped hands
to ask for manna to fall into our wounded mouths

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Jay Kophy is a Ghanaian poet and writer whose poems have been featured in literary magazines such as Glass Poetry, Praxis Magazine, Kalahari Review, Eunoia Review, Tampered Press and many others. His poem “If the Body Could Speak” appeared in the second issue of 20.35 Africa's Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. He's also the editor of anthologies to grow in two bodies and How to Write My Country's Name, two collections of poems and short stories from emerging young African writers. You can find him on Twitter @jay_kophy.