Funto Omojola, If I Gather Here and Shout

 

i carry
i carry sickness into thehouse. look at the sew er pretending to
know how to wring me lookat the sew er pretending to bathe me
look at the sew erpretending to know how many scalpels were
used that day look at thegashes he has made look at the way he
reaches into belly topull out seeds look at the way he reaches
into belly to pull outseeds look at the way he cleans it look at the
seams he has made hereand here. look at the way he seems look
at the way he seams lookat the sew erlookat his disciples lookat
his disciples look at theway they seamlook at their nails look at
their calves the way theyrun in
tandem through villagesthat palm and palm and palm have
touched look at their nailsmetals
against
look at their mouths theway they spit out lookat the way they lick
their lips and grin anddive intolook at the way they’re book look at
their mouths the way theyuntidy and spread

FromNew York-based Nigerian-American writer, performer and visual artist Funto Omojola comes the full-length debut, If I Gather Here and Shout (NewYork NY: Nightboat Books, 2024). If I Gather Here and Shout holds asingle, extended prose-lyric, the book-length poem “Ceremony,” which makes fora titled work made up of a differently titled work, almost as a box within abox, as though the poem itself too big to be contained within a singleframework. “what is this tumbling place where only i am center unmoving?”Omojola writes, early on in the collection, to open one of multiple poems titled“Fig.,” “what / is this tumbling stage around me and around me where there are/ jesters and sticks curved toward my chest?” Each “Fig.” piece offers a scene,another step, across a narrative arc of swell and plague, illness and joy andresistance and beauty, writing history and family, present tense and thetensions of history that ripple across decades. “say body enter machine,”writes a further “Fig.,” “cold. how many worms per square inch how many squareinches / per worm entering machine, cold also? say girl body into machine, /lungs. how many worms legless hurdling toward machine, / lungs also?”

Thepoems are rhythmic, propulsive, pushing at and against medical crises andsystematic violence across a prose-lyric staggered into clusters, each cluster delineatedby the modesty of a single, black page. Omojola works through spirit andmachine, the body and its limitations, and the complications of seeking interventionthrough the medical system, family, faith, articulating the collisions betweencollective and the self. “the urgency precludes and i am an open mouthscreaming: an / open mouth screaming: an open stomach screaming through / machine,”writes another “Fig.” Omojola writes through song and swell, rhythmic beats andpulse. “i am saline leaking out of mouth,” a further “Fig.” writes, “componentof a child’s destiny. if you cannot make a picture of a / spear, you cannotmake a picture of hunger. if you cannot make / a picture of hunger, you cannotmake a picture of seep. alert the / guards who hold needles: the girl with thelong tongue who hides / peel between front teeth is here. adorn me with robesof men cast in / robes of kings.”