the morning of my mother’s wedding, everything unfurled— my aunt holding my dead cousin in her chest⸺ his cold mouth still glued to his mother’s nipples.
as my mother walked down the aisle, we walked my wet eyes aunt and her dead son to the small hole we dug for him at the back of the house.
it was her first boy of her womb from a cesarean section. we tried to revive him by stuffing breath in his throat.⸺ and to set fire to his heart with prayers and say_______, come forth.
but we are no Christ and my aunt’s son was no Lazarus.
we're still ashamed of ourselves⸺ of our prayer that ended with, “God, please heal this child of his illness, God, please heal this child of his illness” we had prayed for other children before him and they still died.
Jeremy T. Karn is the author of Miryam Magdalit (APBF & Akashic Books, 2021), part of the New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani. His works have recently appeared/are forthcoming in Olney Magazine, The Adriot Journal, The Penn Review, Poetry Wales, Whale Road, Lolwe, Cheat River Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Red Ogre Review, Native Skin, and elsewhere. He is the EIC at Pepper Coast Lit. He tweets @jeremy_karn96