Joseph Omoh Ndukwu

Because Nothing is Complete, I Work With What Is Close at Hand

I walk about my house as in a public park,
as if by walking I drive in order like stakes
around something falling apart.
I walk as I write, against solitude itself
—something must keep us company—
against silence, against darkness, against the hours
where, in this house, things multiply
in absurd symmetry. With what will I arm myself?
For it appears I live in a ball of illusions—
Everything I see is what I want to see, what I have seen
what I can see, what shouldn’t be seen.
What I can no longer bear to see.
I am in a cave designed by Dali, full of mirrors,
one stunned cat in mid-air, and I am the water pirouetting
from the silver bucket. Because to be the cat is to be
twice exposed. In my search for company, which really
is a search for warmth, I draw the chequered blanket
over me and scrabble for things I have misplaced
and things that have misplaced me.
My father. My God. The tune of old songs.
I want to sing something I remember
from start to finish, but nothing is complete. So
I work with what is close at hand—
a friend’s cat eight streets away, nighttime conversations
with an old love in Canada, Aretha Franklin’s
“I Never Loved a Man,” Sontag`s essays by the bed,
the warm squeezing of my own sorrow

Joseph Omoh Ndukwu

Joseph Omoh Ndukwu is a writer and editor from Nigeria. His work has
appeared in Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Transition, Off Assignment, and
elsewhere. His essays on art have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Sole
Adventurer, Contemporary And, The Republic, and in catalogues and journals.
In 2021, he was selected for the Momus Emerging Critics Residency, and in
2022, he won the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing.