Special Feature: “Tenebrae” by O-Jeremiah Agbaakin

Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: When Poetry Editor Rebecca Lindenberg was accepting poems for our Fall 2022 issue (19.2), O-Jeremiah Agbaakin’s “Tenebrae” was one at the top of her list. At that time, though, the poem was in a book scheduled to be published before the issue, which meant we wouldn’t be able to acquire the kind of rights we need. We accepted three other poems for that issue instead, “autobiography,” “Shibboleth,” and “time capsule.” But we still wanted to share “Tenebrae” with our readers, so we reached out to the African Poetry Book Fund through Akashic Books, who gave us permission to feature the poem on our website in conjunction with the book’s release. Though the original publication date changed, the chapbook is now available, and we’re glad to share “Tenebrae” with you, as well as a statement from Agbaakin about the poem and the chapbook itself.

Tenebrae

after Caravaggio’s The Sacrifice of Isaac

in a past life, you’re the still life painting
the light took so long to enter. a constellation
lies 290 light-years away from the earth.

come, find the sky & all its dark matter. its
sudden meteor shower like blood spurting
from the ram’s neck at the feast of the Eid.

drained, the man finds new color in the blood
crust of communion wine. the platelets bind
the bristles as the son bleeds from his eyes.

for the half-light, you will have to tarry for
days until the clot darkens a bit. for the shade
between hemorrhage & bloodmeal. you lead

the painter where he should go with his fingers.
not by the pointillists’ breadcrumbs. you lead
the angel to the knife holding a hand in filicide.

you hide every body part in canvas, so blessed
is the man who can make a mouth & make it
scream & stop at once. like centuries later,

Picasso’s weeping woman & Repin’s Ivan
the Terrible. like Gentileschi’s Holofernes
like an ember holding its breath in a coal.

blessed is the mouth too for talking to a painter
in a language brief as the color covenant between
them. for heeding the sculptor’s first creed:

a᷆gbe᷂᷇ju᷆ ni᷇i᷇ b’amu᷇ e᷆re je᷂᷇. beware, the chisel’s
vanity as it carves & carves. beware the bristles
stiffened like a cat’s whiskers soaked in blood.

Writer’s Statement

The Sign of the Ram is a poetry chapbook that examines the subliminal violence in a father-son relation, earthly or divine. It’s about tenderness and intimacy (and the threat to this intimacy through betrayal and abandonment in friendship, relationship, and the family, through the lens of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. It looks at the violence that’s not often visible because it’s been justified by the state, religion, or tradition. It also pays homage to George Stinney, executed on the electric chair at the age of fourteen years. I wrote the earliest poem in the chapbook in April 2019 when I was still grappling with my own father’s betrayal. I struggled to find a language to capture the ineffable heartache from that time until April 2021, when I decided to confront myself in language by writing thirty poems for thirty days. Because I like to distance myself in writing, I found the story of Isaac as a perfect scaffold to build a pathos that was no longer about me. We often find succor in the stories of suffering (and the redemption) of others who have come before us.

O-Jeremiah Agbaakin is the author of The Sign of the Ram (APBF/Akashic Books, 2022), part of the New Generation African Chapbook Boxset Series. His poems have recently been featured in Beloit Poetry Journal, Guernica, Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, West Branch, and elsewhere. He is pursuing an MFA at the University of Mississippi.