“Autobiography”

Joshua Effiong, Nigeria

Creators of Justice Award 2022 | Second Prize: Poetry

Joshua Effiong (Frontier VI) is a writer and digital artist from the Örö people of Nigeria. Author of a poetry chapbook Autopsy of Things Left Unnamed (2020). His works has been published or forthcoming in 580 split, Wrongdoing Magazine, Vast Literary Press, Native Skin and elsewhere. Find him on Instagram @josh.effiong and twitter @JoshEffiong.

 Autobiography

On this side of history, I squeeze a blue

river into my bloodstream, and paint

my face into a sky of fireflies. If the

genesis of bloom is defined by rainfall,

what would you say of the cactus flourishing

in my air sacs? Here's an autobiography

scribbled with the nectar of purple hibiscus:

I've grafted my eyes into the moon, and

half of me into the body of a bristlecone pine.

I've painted my darkness with brushes of

sunshine. I still wonder, how the wind,

ever ready, plucks our joy before it ripens.

Each day, I return to the theory of existence;

being half-human and half-cactus. I've learned

to not embrace a bouquet of scented laughter

fervently. When I was a child, Mother would

always retell the story of a man who decayed

from within. She'd describe finite details of

how he became a pillar of earth at sunrise.

I was too fascinated to question its authenticity.

But, as adulthood dawns, I realize man is

a biomass of green dust, and he can also

fashion his decay. On the other side of history,

I'm a pool of sunlight. I organize a feast in

a garden for the grief that has molded me.

I begin plowing my heart for the downpour

of cultured miracles. For the umpteenth time,

every atom of oxygen diffusing into my bones

congregate into platelets of stars while I re-enter

the choicest of loamy detritus to fetch urns of bliss.

Tell me, what qualifies a body which is burnished

with plights to hunger for efflorescence? Again,

stroke my cheek, and catch the falling granules

of amethyst. To be honest, I am becoming an

explorer's delight: a prairie of treasures: fistful

of rainbows: nuclide of polychromatic spoils.