Migwi Mwangi
Migwi Mwangi is a storyteller from Nairobi, Kenya. His work is forthcoming or has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Fence, Nashville Review, Copper Nickel among others. He has been nominated for Best New Poets and is an MFA candidate at NYU's Creative Writing Program.
Owed to Coffin Makers
The Book of Dreams I inherited is septic. My dead linger
in the entryway. I am the traffic officer’s hand; such severe
gesticulation, haste. There! I point to a small wind, the stream
cut to cool the millstone. The dogs are barking so hard in
their cages. Wasn’t I promised an intermission? I am watered
& emptied, watered & emptied, I am rice. At its most centrifugal,
grief compels me to praise the dead. A little at a time, shumari
to prepare the watering mouth for sponge cake. Earshot always,
my ancestors yearn to explain themselves. The eye at the back of
my head is windowed by leukemia, breast cancer, and wild turkeys.
I am soft, malleable, the most eager instrument to return earth
to earth. I am the coffin maker’s arena. I am pine. No more
the dead, no more the hand creasing my shoulder I cannot prove.
This time I am the six pallbearing hands, the lowering machine.
I will climb into the grave absolutely alone. I will comport
my anguish, make for the shovel, heap & heft, thump & vault,
I am the taste of metal in the lungs, blisters oozing the feverish
hands. My grief is twelve brass handles, thirteen kilos of ochre
but each of my joineries will hold what the spirit world cannot keep.
I will be lighter than I was at birth. Here is my grey matter.
Slice & slice & slice this lobe of mushroom. I am the coffin maker’s
brush: nothing varnishes quite like me. Deep in the mountains
where I was born, there is a rectangular patch of dirt. Was it there
where my afterbirth was buried? My whole life, I’d felt
a great despair, felt so extinguished. But my gods, my dead
living gods, hadn’t I, all the while, been buried there too?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Image by Tedday Tavan from Pexels
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
© 2025 Iron Oak Editions
Stay Connected to Our Literary Community. Subscribe to Our Newsletter
