Two Poems by Nnadi Samuel
Hottentot Venus – Sarah Baartman
“Nature is a temple, where the living pillars sometimes
utter indistinguishable words. Man passes through these
forests of symbols which regard him with familiar looks.”
—from Baudelaire’s poem “Correspondence”
There is a leash plagued with fancy, enough to dog a Negro round the continent. this one comes to England of her own naked will—
& did so, bent like a cartwheel, crawling half the journey.
body, wreaked by the weight of steatopygia.
the excess suddenness of fat, collecting on a heap of days that unfolds in gallops.
a trader bargains for custody, dangles a large bag of coins,
& she inks a lifetime signature on his contract: to display the meat of her skin in a stable, like a show-horse in a cage, leaping at the barking orders of her animal trainer.
the caesura of her feet, dragging a line on stage till it breaks, mid-tempo.
she thumps her chest with the rustic blows of a female bushman, enacting the once savage dance of Africa.
the audience is invited to touch the jiggle of her flesh, but from a slight distance. as though, the thin line between reality and performance is consent enough.
there is a state of mind in art that takes pleasure in being moved—
in ways that makes one complicit to humiliation, mistaking a punishment for pleasure.
I, too, am in the theatre of my own objectification, fondled into rage, being touched by the same white hands, tape-measuring my passport in the way they reached for the privacy of Sarah Baartman’s bosom, till she grabbed a Briton by the balls
& stormed out naked on the street that covered her in dark umbra.
the men sneak her body to distant towns, selling out shows & STIs* the 18th century style. once she goes down on all four, the queens take turns in making a caricature of her back. they rode her to death, smoke belting out of her fallen lungs.
in the black quiet of night, she is sold in shrouds to sculptors who limed her in liquid resin, cast her frame in bronze
& placed it in a museum for the highest bidder.
aren’t you in shock like me, dear reader,
that even in death, an image still returns more money than the country’s revenue
& they do it, fatigued & breathless still.
the government sends back her remains to Cape Town, on Mandela’s demand. I am in negotiation for my own body’s return to my homeland.
what is the cost value of an immigrant’s stay here, say, after tax?
what lunatics me, if not this literature that bends my back in reverse sportsmanship.
I refuse on smoke & whiskey to live past this ache.
the incense of my being, spirals on the ground until I’m baked into a swoon.
in a dream, clay pours on the edge of my lying body, dries on the spot & I stood up to use—leaving a monument for the ethereal world.
my presence, hung there on display like an over-worn jacket. sand stacked like cuboid, resting on both of my breasts.
I wonder if I’m inciting yet another metaphor for being trespassed without consent, considering my nakedness here.
I walk the corners of a house wearing a silence stripped of its own silk. the sun rearranging my insteps, to invent a box of light.
a girl passes by and disregards me with unfamiliar hatred:
you/ actor by pretense. you/ animal in a cage, exposing yourself, being touched.
* STI means sexually transmitted infection
I Write My Rebellion in Disappearing Language
I—snipers away, was once capable of detonation.
now, I’m reduced to this thing, teething brightly on wires & microwave sensor: wailing devices that yee-haws intruder to scampering—
the way sound straightens the tip of my body into alertness.
I awake, full of shouting.
estate walls flattened to a neat collapse.
the mugshot holds a crime that keeps a moustache. its racial stink traced to my lineage.
what if it were a negro is not investigate enough.
my lips, wonder-ridded of names that fits the roll call. our black license placed for the highest bidder:
this country that is all border & nothing else.
I approach a phone booth & rifle light surrounds me. I make for Accident lane.
see what a town is named after: perfect excuse to fill a body with so much accidental discharge—it yawns into tributaries: a motionless debate.
a gang of berets, pistol-loaded, squares up to us.
when a finger snaps, the sergeant attempts asphyxiation on our throats, & we reward him with black temper.
one body eats fire, & the rest flattens to the ground.
• • •
isn’t it a myth, how I still own a loin to write you this verse?
the constitution probes my effrontery to name a sonnet after its victim. says, harm hasn’t known me yet,
so, the hypocrisy in scripting their agony in first person pronoun.
same me who was chased by a pistol-mouth down Allen Avenue. a thousand evidences brought to my hearing,
while sordid hands ransack my manuscript—
not knowing I write my rebellion in disappearing language.
I lack subtle ways to put this:
living is one delicate chore I could do all month, without returning Ma’s voicemail.
I am in search of newer methods to body her in my thoughts, the way negro speak of bodies.
the way Floyd flagged down a cop for small talk, only to be tucked into his grave.
as we write his demise in disappearing language,
while the cops spiral bind what’s left to have him shipped down home soil.
I reckon, nothing shoulders a body past water, if it’s not family. not the vassal, or the vessel, or the viscous tide.
I desire to happen as a metaphor in one of one of Danez Smith’s sonnets. but I was born defenseless, without wonder.
of what use is a fence anyway, if the body is standing? I wake up to an open field, no
walls guiding our bodies.
whatever terror walks in our direction, would have return home well-fed.
each evening, my loin straightens into alertness.
I fist the rib of my imagination to achieve a black pulse.
Nnadi Samuel (he/him/his)holds a B.A in English and literature from the University of Benin. His works have been published or are forthcoming in Suburban Review, Seventh Wave Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, PRISM, Ex-Puritan, PORTER HOUSE Review, Plenitude Magazine, Common Wealth Writers, Jaggery, Foglifter, The Capilano Review, Poetry Ireland and elsewhere. He is a three-time Best of the Net, eight-time Pushcart Nominee, and author of Nature Knows a Little About Slave Trade selected by Tate. N. Oquendo (Sundress Publication, 2023). His third micro-chapbook “Biblical Invasion, BC” was published by Bywords (Ottawa, CA) in 2024.
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