My Mother Is The Last Piece Of The Holy Trinity – A Poem by Jeremy T. Karn

My Mother Is The Last Piece Of The Holy Trinity

for Cecelia.

I.
i believe in my mother, / her memories & the pains
& every time i prayed,
                                         i mentioned / my mother’s name
& made / it holy like the Trinity

dear Lord, may this / not be the last poem / i will write for a woman
                                         who has protected / her own son like
the way you had protected yours

2003, in a broken country – with / a thin body,
                             my mother baked /a thick wall inside my skin
that’s how i survive / a war that was fed with
                                         babies’ bodies / being crowded with bullets

[“& lo a voice from heaven, said, this is my beloved Son daughter, in whom I am well pleased.”]

II.
i am my mother’s first love –
                                         her yesterday, today & forever

a scars that show / her feeding the / 4,000 mouths
                                         that grew in me/ when my father left

i am the origin of the wrinkles that / run on her face like veins
                        & today i believe more in / my mother like the way / i believe in Yeshua

---

Jeremy T. Karn @Jeremy_Karn96 writes from somewhere in Liberia. His work had appeared in 20.35: Contemporary African Poets Volume III anthology, The Whale Road, The Rising Phoenix, Kalahari Review, African Writers,  Praxis Online, Shallow Tales Review and elsewhere. His chapbook, Miryam Magdalit,  has been selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani  (The African Poetry Book Fund), in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2021 New-Generation African Poets chapbook box set.

Banner: Lovely Rose, photograph and digital manipulation by Moira J. Saucer.