3 Poems by Jeremy Karn

How we got here

how many wonders have you heard about in your life time / the Noah’s flood / the miracles of Jesus or / the tea pot that hums an old Adventist hymn alone on the stove until I fall asleep….

i want to write about the sun that sets in a zinc bucket 
i want to write about us / about our love / about the beach running into the sea for a ball
two footprints sit in the sand / before the sea mouth

i am the footprints on the beach / the evening wind / returning home after a long day on the sea;
the wave running out of the / sea because of the water coldness i will forget & skip sleep for two years and / wake up tomorrow only to love things that / are not meant to be loved
the sun that died yesterday evening resurrected this morning to beat Jesus’ record 

God’s body was found on the shore today not naked or water filled like Jonah’s
my mother said i have lineage to cain & abel…& this my mother begets pain, hunger and grief

we learned how the sea sleeps at night / i discovered a new way to die by strangling myself with my father’s necktie

(it is quite easier and painless to die by strangulation than depression)

        the crazy thing about this is that the things i want are not what i am receiving

For example: I want a body of my own / god / love / death / & other things I can’t mention

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Last Photograph of a Friend

the list of things that broke her were: 
 a. Lies
 b. Betrayal &
 c. Love

it’s always crazy ending a relationship over the phone.
          standing motionless / & watching the fan turns the wind into a ball

life went & came back in the bulb

your bones got filled with darkness / your body got older than the night standing outside the door.
        you read an old newspaper you abandoned two years ago, 

 play puzzles / read obituary of a girl that strangled her tears into blood
         you gave her breath / you learnt how to die by reading old suicide stories.

nobody taught you how to be strong / you experience heartbreak at the age of nineteen    
so you felt like a stone against / the car tyre; stopping it from chasing / sunlight down the sloping road

            4:23 p.m., today you got robbed alone in your bedroom 
cyanide pills / poem/ letter, & a body were the pictures we took when the you left with your breath

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Feeding the 800,000
after Pamilerin Jacobs

                 800,000 die by suicide every year
                      – WHO
 
    I

akachi too, will be counted among the 800,000 this year
        tomorrow he’ll return & said the world duped him
      because the world escorts him from life to death

    II

              there’s peace beyond death / there’s peace beyond death 
that’s how one dies by believing too much in Judas Iscariot (inventor of suicide)
        mama said one third of the cemeteries in the world are filled with suicide victims

two thirds of mothers learnt how to sew tears into sackcloth
        every touch of God feels like a sin, so you hid until He losts sight of you

    III

the clocks on the walls are still beautiful;
    two shirtless boys run into the sea to prove they are still alive
death too, after all is a metaphor

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Jeremy T. Karn is a 23-year old poet from Monrovia, Liberia. He is an undergraduate Sociology student. His poems have been published by Praxis Magazine, Odd Magazine, Nantygreens, Kalahari Review, African Writer and Elsewhere. He can be reached through his email jkarn209@gmail.com.