for legs – skill becoming reflex. It won’t hit you
until after your fifth heartbreak, the probability
that your lust to go back to the lover before
the last, might be linked to that rapid flick
of Michael Joseph’s glove before he floats backwards.
After all, whatever problems you might have had
with the old flames, there’s been reflection. Funny how
you forget the petty flash points of your rows,
but can recall exactly how they made your skin tingle,
the imprint of their lips at the tips of your fingers
still a phantom that can resurrect shivers in you.
What’s important is that, for now, it’s just an urge;
you know cause and effect is never simple; you know
MJJ learned that move from someone, you’ve heard
his father beat him; you know your own daddy
used to slap your mummy. She’d lift you by
your arms, leave... but always returned. The music
his pleading made was an addiction she couldn’t shake
till he died. And that whole vial of time, you hid
in your room, rewinding that Maxell, stopping the tape
at the point in Billie Jean when that bass rhythm hits,
then pressing play, the song’s protest surging forth
while you learned to glide, back, back, back, pause,
shimmy, the volume rising over arguments, your heels
repelling each other like magnets, never touching earth.
To Be In Love
Sometimes love is static, that ancient
honed vinyl crackle, tagging along easy,
a groupie bearing the bounty of beats,
B-flat horns, Hammond highs and double
bass staccatos that make a classic song.
If your father ever missed record’s release
it was due to some lure your mother conjured;
if he didn’t, the record’s pull surpassed the gleam
of the lips Mother smiled with - it was love
either way. Imagine how, out of a lifetime
hoard, he wakes one weekend to curate for you
a selection of songs, letting the 33⅓s spin
as he records them onto magnetic tapes he will
pass on. Stickler for detail, he adjusts volume
levels so Lateef’s horn will not suddenly drown
Masekela’s Lady when the songs lean to transition.
He will die soon after you have learned to love
the five tapes he labelled for you, technology
listening to A Little 3/4 for God & Co as MP3
instead of on the old grey machine that clicks
with a familiar cushioned resistance in the dark
before the motor starts its coordinated roll,
before the sound lifts the hem of the invisible.
But some blue day, your heart broken, sorting
through the detritus of an eternal love
that just failed to make a full fifteen years,
you stumble upon one of the tapes. You are
surrounded by boxes, a lone black spot
beneath clear-eyed London skies - a rare thing.
Batteries located, you insert modern ear buds
into a pale blue SONY Walkman and press
play. Lionel Hampton’s vibes ring out sharp
and cheery on How High the Moon. Time drags
you back to your book-filled living room in Accra
where all your loves were seeded. You remember
what it feels like to be in love because it is right,
not because it’s what’s expected; you are lost,
close to heaven for 3.20 minutes before Hamp’s
flourish pulls you to the present. As the sound
fades, a shadow falls over you. It may be
a passing bird, it may be the shape of your father’s
silhouette. What is certain is a new song is
beginning, something with brushes as gentle
as lashes - and your cheeks are wet.
Casablanca
PRELUDE
Barely through with the opening credits, film music,
and already I’m mad; that projected map
that stuffs nations into someone else’s dwarf
of an imagination: an entire history named French
West Africa, a bright inheritance of diamonds
and pain flagged for Leopold as Belgian
Congo. I’m relieved that the text inked over
the part of the continent I call home’s blurred
so I can’t see the insult. Then the Black man
from the United States of America starts playing
the white and black of the piano with a big smile.
ACT ONE
Of my father’s stories, the one with the Moroccan Amazigh
who taught him to shoot in London, has everything: star-
crossed lovers, adventure, a kind of betrayal. Shape-shifting
after attempts on his life and two sweet honey traps,
to head from Algiers, train and fight with the Independence
movements gaining traction in South West Africa. He broke up
with Kirsten, his Swedish lover, seen with him at a café
table in a picture in our house, staring at him
his whole life. Franz Fanon was waiting; he loved her
but he couldn’t live at ease, knowing his people were not free.
TRANSITION
[pan shot of expected desert scenes; rapid montage
of volunteers in training (remember Black people
can’t be on screen for too long), flash quick image
of Cuban flag as the new recruits take cover
behind sand dunes (maybe a hammer and sickle
for good measure), we hear a quick volley of gunfire,
fade to black present] In the last throes
of pre-militant partying, my father spotted
the shape of my mother across a room.
He raised his arm, the light was right; in autumn
night, a shadow fell, time goes by.
ACT TWO
Unlike the other darkies, he gets a speaking part; indeed
he’s the soundtrack of Rick’s, he moves with the man
from Paris to Casablanca – damn his private life, his needs
his desires, his family, the wo/man he loves. I see
how the lines are drawn: his piano can hold the transit
papers, but there is no transition for him. He plays
the tune, but he can’t dance. If you don’t know
the story, star-crossed lovers from Paris meet again
in Casablanca; there is a war on, stakes are high.
One lover, a bar owner (where the Black man plays)
sacrifices his feelings – we hope – for the greater good.
ACT THREE
In Kirsten’s story, I guess I’d be part of the greater
good, except that she doesn’t know my father never made it
to Algeria. She returned to Stockholm; she may have
had his picture, may have presumed him dead before cancer
took him – forever a hero in the frame of her memory.
Still, he was what she imagined – so full of love
with a capacity for the ruthless – as Mr Toft, spouse of
the Danish Consul found when he leered at my mother
likening her to coffee. My father gave him a 10-count, calmly
walked indoors to fetch the sturdy pistol he still had
a licence for from the 1960s – something from a Moroccan.
The man (Mr Toft), given his belly, ran faster
than I’ve ever seen sin
ce, across the map of Africa,
earth beneath his feet. He may be in Brazzaville now
(a place of deceit and loss), with Renault and Rick.
Vogue
Some nights my sleep is vain, wants
to watch itself in mirrors, show off
its twists, its feints, its hilarious ability
to evade capture, how it dips its toes in
blue daydreams, then runs past desperate hours,
its compass north and awake, to the edge of
faded moon bliss – a cliff over which it just hangs
its legs, like kids in chairs too high for them,
singing questions into the altitude of my stillness
like a random herd of nuns or Von Trapps ambushed
by Alps green. It turns to its good left side
to watch itself twerk, checks out its abs
from the front, contemplates a Periscope® stream
by the backlight of an Android®. I’ve tried
everything sensible adults do to drift off – yes,
ev . ery . thing. I’ve had to go back to being a boy,
up in that bunk bed, chattering wild dreams down
to my brother until we wake up in the morning
astonished that we slept – like when I’m in love,
whispering across pillows. Some nights my sleep wants
company and it won’t settle its vogueing self for less.
Notes on Sequences
11-Page Letter to (A)nyemi (A)kpa
I have the peculiar, but not rare background of having heritage both from the diaspora (the African people that were taken from their lands and made to labour unpaid in the Americas and the Caribbean) and the remaining inhabitants of the continent of Africa. As a result of that I carry an English surname in addition to my Ga names. As a result of that my engagement with the world has always been in a minimum of two languages – one of which has always sought to belittle me. When I chose the name 11-Page Letter to (A)nyemi (A)kpa as the title of this sequence, I was consciously shifting the frame of reference to my first language of love while retaining a link to my first language of oppression. Anyemi in Ga has sibling as its closest equivalent in English, but, since we don’t have a separate word for cousins in Ga, it goes beyond sibling and – importantly – it is not gendered. Akpa means good – and it was such a joy to me that in coining a Ga compound word that would have the same abbreviation as ‘African-American’, I arrived at good sibling/cousin/fam. Our languages will always raise us to the level we deserve. I truly wanted to pay homage to Aaliyah at some point, but a 4-Page Letter was not enough and I also wanted the visual effect of two siblings standing side-by-side that 11 gives, as well as the mathematical resolution of one-two-one that shifts number into the language of conversation. I wanted to write this poem as a start of the conversation that we should be having amongst ourselves as continent and diaspora – away from all the distraction we have been taught as knowledge in languages that are not our own. I want us to talk about the wound of being taken away as well as the wound of being left behind and wondering if your abducted family will ever return – the silent trauma that many African communities carry that are reflected in taboos and social codes that we haven’t even began to unpack. As a child I never understood why I wasn’t supposed to whistle when the sun began to set until I found out as an adult that at the height of the slave trade people were kidnapped by mercenaries if they were not quiet. I also want us to talk about the things we have kept in spite of all that was taken from us; how the most affecting compliment we retain across centuries, seas and loss is naa bo, i’na bo ei, wo nono... ‘there you are’, ‘I see you’. How heartbreaking it is for us to be – in so many places – the invisible! This is a poem to say I see you.
Crossroad vs Blues
My late father raised me with a love for blues and one of the first CDs I bought was an 18-track John Lee Hooker album called Boogie Man from a UK blues magazine in 1994. I only owned 7 CDs at the time so I listened religiously and read all I could about the man. Summary? Illiterate, but a prolific lyricist – a perfect metaphor for oral styles of learning, history and growth. If proof were needed of his intelligence, he recognised how the record industry was exploiting Black musicians and signed contracts under different names to maximise his upfront recording income. Hooker’s playing style was so idiosyncratic that it was hard to pull in a backing band for him so he tapped his own foot to accompany his songs. His story never left me and as I read about more blues musicians – male and female – I was stunned by how hard they had to fight to earn what they were worth. Even worse, the (mainly) British musicians who later came to imitate them became rich overnight. Suddenly, the Robert Johnson myth of selling his soul to the devil at a crossroad in order to gain his incredible virtuosic gift didn’t sound like such a romantic idea after all. It sounded like erasure. These imitators, blessed with the means to buy guitars from early on, spend hours trying to master Johnson’s sound and, when they can’t, we start to hear about deals with the devil. It’s a story that doesn’t take into account the fact that Robert Johnson was ridiculed on stage early in his playing career, went away with the fire and fury of rejection and forged a sound that could no longer be ignored. It’s a similar story with Black musicians in general; their brilliance is linked to struggle, with no explanation for how every other Black person is not an amazing musician. No, these blues artists are geniuses who make the complex appear simple, who achieve greatness in spite of oppression and struggle and they deserve respect. If the song seems simple, play it again.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful for the friends who see me, the family who hold me and the Ga language that gave me my foundation in dreaming. Also for Ms G, thank you for all the space and spice you give me.
I’d also like to thank editors of the following journals where versions of the poems in the book appeared earlier: Cordite Poetry Review for “Seeing Eyes”; Miracle Monocle for “Defences” and a section from “Caress”; Obsidian for “Locking Doors”; The Rialto for “Trumpet”; and Johannesburg Review of Books for “Bottle” and “Tree of the Invisible Man”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a writer, editor and publisher, who has won acclaim as a children’s author, poet, broadcaster and novelist. He is the author of the poetry chapbooks: eyes of a boy, lips of a man (1999), his début; M is for Madrigal (2004), a selection of seven jazz poems; and Ballast (2009), an imagination of the slave trade by balloon. His poem, ‘Tin Roof’, was selected for the Poems on the Underground initiative in 2007, followed by the poem ‘Barter,’ chosen from his first full collection The Makings of You, published by Peepal Tree in 2010. His novel, Tail of the Blue Bird (Jonathan Cape, 2009), hailed by the Financial Times as ‘a beautifully written fable… simple in form, but grappling with urgent issues,’ was lauded internationally, becoming a bestseller in Germany and notably winning France’s two major prizes for translated fiction – Prix Baudelaire and Prix Laure Bataillon – in 2014. He is the author of two books for children under the name K.P. Kojo and has a collection of short stories, The City Will Love You, due from Unbound. Nii is the Senior Editor and publisher at flipped eye publishing, serves on the boards of World Literature Today and the AKO Caine Prize and produces the Literature and Talks programme at Brighton Festival.
As a socio-cultural commentator and advocate for African writing, Nii has led forums internationally, has sat on discussion panels for BBC Radio, and he founded the African Writers’ Evening series.
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